Nursing union commentary made false allegations

Mayor invites union head to appear before Haldimand County council

First and foremost, I want to extend my most sincere thank you to all public health nurses. You have adapted, persevered and served your communities though the most challenging time in our history. We all owe you a debt of gratitude. This is why it is difficult for me to write this in response to a recent article that Ms. Vicki McKenna (president of Ontario Nurses Association) placed in this paper, rehashing a number of false allegations and trying to avoid the serious issues raised not by me, but by the Board of Health.

In April, less than a month after a global pandemic was declared, Ms. McKenna went to the media and made the very same false allegations: that the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit (HNHU) laid off staff during the worst health crisis we have ever faced. Her allegations were proven factually incorrect then. They are still factually incorrect now. The HNHU did not lay off staff during a pandemic. The real facts are the board approved hiring 22 additional public health staff at a taxpayer cost of nearly $2 million.

Ms. McKenna, you can choose to call me names in the media, I can take that — you are not the first and you won’t be the last. However, when I take a stand, I do it on the council floor where I can be challenged. I don’t twist the facts to the public, refuse to answer the questions of elected officials, or take to writing one-sided columns in newspapers.

My family has had a long tradition in unions: my father was a negotiator for OSSTF, grandfather was an employee fund rep for Dofasco, and I was the treasurer for the WestJet

Pilot’s Association. I respect a collective agreement and I am fully supportive of our nurses, but I draw the line when a union wants taxpayer money for hours that were not worked, especially during a global pandemic when many of those taxpayers footing that bill have lost their livelihoods entirely. Or worse, when a union leader puts a community in harm’s way by purposely frustrating the hiring of additional nurses after significant funding was approved, or the using of volunteers, to further its own self-interested agenda during a public health emergency.

Issue 1: The premier gave us $500,000 to hire five nurses to assist with the school program. Under HNHU collective agreement, RNs earn more than $100,000 a year, making it impossible to hire five RNs and stay within our funding envelope. So staff informed you that we would hire a mix of RNs and RPNs, similar to what other jurisdictions were doing and was allowed by the province. You objected — insisting that all jobs went to RNs only. For those readers that don’t realize, ONA represents both RNs and RPNs in HNHU, so effectively what is going on is a union is favouring some of their members over others, despite the fact that all are qualified to do the work required. A president of a union has obligation to represent all of its members. At least, that’s what I was always taught.

Issue 2: In March, the province took an unprecedented step to suspend collective agreements, allowing health-service providers to better respond to the crisis. We utilized this tool to move our nurses from a 35-hour week (Mon-Fri), to four, 10-hour shifts per week. Every two weeks, that equated to two additional days off, plus 10 hours of paid overtime. Now during the heart of the pandemic, Ms. McKenna has decided to seek a settlement from the taxpayers arguing they ought to receive 24 hours of overtime over the same period (even though they only worked 10), plus the additional days off.

There are other issues as well the councillors of Haldimand and Norfolk would like an answer to, like why it is OK for other health units to call on volunteers to assist with making contact tracing phone calls, but in HNHU, you have obstructed this also?

The issues that we discussed at council that you claim as being “unprofessional” and “irresponsible” were asking some pretty simple questions on behalf of the taxpayers who are, frankly, paying the bill. What is disappointing to me is that the president of a union representing health-care workers is using a pandemic in this way to try to enrich members at the cost of those in the community.

What you need to do is stand up in front the Board of Health and Haldimand Council and answer these questions for our residents — the ones we both serve. This is my invitation to you to attend our next Board of Health meeting, to give us a presentation, and then to take questions directly from the members representing the residents of Haldimand and Norfolk. Because right now when someone who has had to close their business or lost their job, asks me these simple questions, quite frankly, I don’t have an answer for them.