Hiring freeze in place to cut costs
A two-month hiring freeze takes effect today at the Saskatoon Health Region as management tries to squeeze cost savings out of its deficit budget.
“The only target (for the budget) is balanced. What we’re saying today is it’s going to be a big challenge,” health region CEO Dan Florizone said at a news conference on Wednesday. “It means course correction. It means looking at other initiatives mid-year.”
The temporary hiring freeze, which applies to in-scope employees, is part of a plan to minimize layoffs as the health region looks to cut $34 million from its spending. A “voluntary separation program” that encourages out-of-scope employees to retire or resign also takes effect today (out-of-scope positions are already subject to a hiring freeze).
Florizone said the purpose of the voluntary separation program is to allow redeployment of staff into areas of need as vacancies are created voluntarily. The alternative would be involuntary departures, he noted.
The health region ended the 2015-16 fiscal year on March 31 with a deficit of $35.7 million on its $1.2-billion budget. Thanks to a cash injection from the province, the deficit was $10 million less than the $45 million the region had been projecting.
The health region’s budget for 2016-17 is due to be presented to its board of directors at their next meeting, in September, but some of the cost-saving measures are being rolled out as they’re needed.
The region began introducing parts of its “sustainability plan” in December, 2015, targeted at reducing the gap between expenses and revenues.
During the first three quarters of the 2015-16 fiscal year, the gap averaged $5 million per month. In the final quarter, it averaged $3.2 million per month; in the first quarter of 2016-17, it was further reduced to an average of $2.7 million per month.
Barbara Cape, president of Service Employees International Union-West (SEIU-West), said she
What we’re saying today is it’s going to be a big challenge. It means course correction. It means looking at other initiatives mid-year.
was relieved there are no layoffs at this stage, but she hopes the health region takes into account the potential impact on workloads of the front-line health care providers who remain after staff reductions.
“I’m happy to see the Saskatoon Health Region being very frank about the crisis that they’re in,” she said.
“I think the health region has done a great deal of work over the last year to try and address their budget deficits, but I think the question the public has to ask is, ‘What is my expectation from my publicly funded ... health-care system?’”
Cape lays the blame for the health region’s fiscal situation at the feet of the provincial government, which she said failed to plan for population growth and the end of the resource boom.
“If we’re going to de-fund a health care system to the point it’s starved of any sort of investment, then our health care system is absolutely going to start falling like a house of cards if we stop paying attention to it,” she said.