Contract talks broke down between the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) on Sept. 21, following what the union refers to as the employer’s unwillingness to confront workplace violence.
The OHA has been bargaining for a new collective agreement with the union’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) since June, according to a CUPE news release. But CUPE claimed that the association had refused to address the issue of violence against hospital employees, the level of which has been rising in the province in recent years.
“Ontario hospital staff, including those that we represent, are the most productive in Canada. While we have modest economic expectations, we did expect that the hospitals would address the problem of violence in our workplaces,” OCHU president Michael Hurley said in a media statement. “Despite widespread evidence of an epidemic of violent assaults against healthcare staff, Ontario’s hospitals have little interest in bargaining constructive measures to reduce and prevent workplace violence.”
Hurley added that OCHU was proposing solutions that would protect employees and patients in bargaining. “However, the hospitals have refused to engage in meaningful dialogue [on] this very important issue,” he said.
The CUPE release claimed that almost half of direct-care hospital staff report assaults by patients or their relatives every year. In addition, violent incidents are very likely underreported, as employees fear reprisals from management, the union stated.
Among the measures that OCHU has proposed to the OHA to deal with the problem: protection against reprisals; personal alarms for all staff; flagging potentially violent patients in internal systems; increased staffing in emergency departments and psychiatric units; improving reporting systems between the Crown and healthcare institutions; and providing counselling to workers who are assaulted.
“Regrettably this far,” said Hurley, all of these recommendations “have been completely rejected by the hospitals.”
“Many hospital staff have been beaten so badly, they will never work again,” OCHU secretary-treasurer Sharon Richer said in a statement. “We are incredibly disheartened that the hospitals are refusing to address this huge problem in collective bargaining.”
In May, nurses with CUPE and Unifor raised the issue with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and the provincial Liberal government, appealing for assistance.
The Ontario chapter of CUPE represents 27,000 hospital workers at120 hospital sites across the province, including nurses, cleaners and dietary, administrative and trades staff. The vast majority of healthcare workers in the province are women, the union said.