WEYBURN – A large group of CUPE health care workers from around the southeast held an information picket over the noon hour on Tuesday in front of the Weyburn General Hospital to ask for the government to return to the bargaining table to deal with their outstanding issues.
The union’s Local 5430 includes health service providers working for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, and includes 14,000 workers across the province as clerical, technical, nursing, support and plant operations. There are roughly 3,000 members in the southeast region. The union has been without a contract since March 31, 2023.
CUPE president Bashir Jalloh spoke to the gathered group near the hospital about the main issues with the government, low wages and working conditions, with recruiting and retention among the largest challenges they are facing currently.
He said they did a survey of CUPE members to ask about how they are doing financially under current wage levels.
“Only 19 per cent of members consider their financial situation as good, while 56 per cent described their situation as poor, and 24 per cent said it was extremely poor. That is why we are here today, to raise awareness,” said Jalloh.
The survey also showed 86 per cent of respondents said they had to cut back their grocery budget; 84 per cent cut back on leisure activities and hobbies; 77 per cent delayed a major purchase; and 73 per cent cancelled or scaled back vacation plans.
What has been happening over the past two or three years in the province is a lot of talk. They took their concerns to politicians and stakeholders, and “we went to the SHA and gave them a three-point plan of what they can do to solve our problems, but all of that has fallen on deaf ears,” he added.
The government has been focusing on recruitment of staff from outside of Canada, “and that has nothing to do people who have suffered here over COVID.”
Jalloh noted that during COVID, these workers were hailed as “heroes” by government and residents alike for keeping services going. “Now, we’re not. We don’t know what happened with their value. … We are tired, we are burned out, we are downcast.”
Weyburn worker Holley Hermann, a medical lab technician, said she works full-time at the hospital, and has a second job just so she can pay her bills that she was able to pay four years ago with just the one job.
“Recruitment is a huge issue here. We have some members that are at the end of their terms. Just a little incentive might keep them working for a few more years,” she said, noting they give new hires a bonus of $30,000, so a new employee ends up making $30,000 more than someone who’s been working there for 30 years.
Hermann also noted that last year their bosses were talking about reducing one of the department, microbiology, but they were able to recruit one person and kept that service in Weyburn.
“Now, it’s still on the table. It would just take one person to leave and they’ll be talking about reducing services again, and that’s coming into a new hospital where we have a whole room dedicated to testing,” she said.
When the provincial budget came down, Jalloh said they went through for some sign they were taking the union’s pleas seriously.
“We didn’t see any meaningful plans to address retention of existing health care staff,” he said, so they will continue to hold these information pickets in the five former health region areas where they represent workers. Weyburn was No. 2 of six, with North Battleford coming up next.
Referring to Weyburn’s new hospital currently under construction, he said, “Yes, it’s good to build hospitals, and yes it’s good to build infrastructure, but if you build all these facilities but you don’t have staff, what’s the point of that?”
