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Elmira, Ontario, Canada | observerxtra.com | Volume 26 | Issue 43
Arts| 16
Hospitals dealing with burnout, recruitment efforts As pandemic drags on, staffing issues including unvaccinated create challenges Justine Fraser Observer Staff
Wellesley’s outside workers held a car rally Tuesday evening in front of the township administration building. Steve Kannon
Union stages rally, addresses council Wellesley Township talks with CUPE Local 1542 remain at an impasse Steve Kannon Observer Staff
NEGOTIATIONS STALLED, THE UNION REPRESENTING Wellesley’s outside workers is stepping up its campaign for a new contract. On Tuesday evening, Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1542 followed up a car rally that started in front of the township administrative building with a direct pitch to councillors for a
resolution to the standoff. The workers have been without a contract since the end of 2020. They say the township is looking to reverse years of gains through collective bargaining, demanding concessions. Union leaders say they won’t back down, but would prefer to reach a deal without a labour stoppage. The president of Local 1542, Chris Roth, notes there’s never been a strike or lockout in 47 years of
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unionized labour at the township. Today, however, the situation is more precarious. Fred Hahn, CUPE’s Ontario president, said there will be no concessions in addressing the workers and their supporters at the rally. “We organize municipal workers all across the province. We have hundreds of collective agreements, and we have bargained dozens of them through the pandemic –
there have been no concessions,” he said. “They are messing with the wrong union and the wrong workers – we don’t bargain concessions.” He said the township can have a settlement or it can have a fight with the union, which is Canada’s largest and boasts a $130-million strike fund. “None of that’s necessary if this employer just does what’s right and takes concessions off the table, → CUPE RALLY 5
THE PANDEMIC DRAGGING ON FOR more than a year and a half, the area’s hospitals are shifting gears to deal with staffing issues related to burnout and, to a lesser extent, unvaccinated employees. At St. Mary’s General Hospital, for instance, there’s a new recruitment program to try to eliminate additional shifts created by pandemic. Healthcare workers have been working longer hours, additional shifts and feeling fatigued due to the pandemic. Local hospitals have been experiencing a backlog on programs and services they provide for residents and has left staff feeling burnt out as they try to keep up. As the fourth wave continues, vaccination rates are on the rise in the region, leading to fewer COVID patients than Lee Fairclough, president of St. Mary’s, was seeing a couple months ago. “Certainly, we’ve seen the number of COVID infectious cases come
down, which I think has been a positive effect of the vaccine and the ongoing public health measures. We’ve seen reductions in the number of patients coming in and out for COVID. What’s interesting, though, is that we are really seeing a lot of increase in people needing care,” she said. “The hospital and the emergency department’s really starting to not just reach pre-COVID levels but exceed them, and a lot of that is people that are in need of care. Some people who may have been waiting for care are now becoming more urgent. The sense of kind of busyness and how full we are at the hospital has not really changed.” Fairclough noted that many staff members at St. Mary’s took on additional shifts during the pandemic as they increased the number of beds to keep up with the rising need. “We’re still at 98 per cent occupancy right now. I do think that people are feeling burnout. And I → HOSPITAL STAFFING 5
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