Alberta hospital workers strike over budget cuts
Province, health workers at odds over plans to outsource 11,000 jobs
EDMONTON— As Dr. Amy Tan watched her colleagues walk off the job Monday as part of a wildcat strike to protest cuts to health care in Alberta, she was at home, sitting on the floor while packers and movers went about emptying her house of furniture.
The hospice and family physician is moving from Alberta this week to Victoria, B.C., where she’ll start a new job in November. She says the main reason she’s moving is a dispute between the provincial government and medical professionals over proposed cuts to health care at a time when the province is seeing COVID-19 case counts steadily increase.
On Monday, Alberta recorded a record number of COVID-19 cases.
“To see a government actually, wilfully make decisions that cause suffering in the context of what I see every day, I just couldn’t reconcile that,” Tan said. “I couldn’t live with that.”
How did the situation reach this point?
Monday’s wildcat strikes, in which hundreds of workers across Alberta participated, were the latest salvo in a bitter dispute between a provincial government focused on finding efficiencies to make up for shortfalls in oil and gas royalties and workers, who say the province’s plan to eliminate fulltime nursing positions and outsource as many as11,000 healthcare jobs amounts to death by a thousands cuts.
The hospital workers were members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. The decision to strike was made by the members themselves, the union said.
Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro’s office declined to comment on the walkouts. Finance Minister Travis Toews said in a statement he was aware of the strikes and that the government’s primary concern was ensuring the health and well-being of patients.
“Alberta Health Services is taking immediate action with the Alberta Labour Relations Board (to) end this illegal activity,” said Toews. “Those involved in this illegal action will be held accountable.”
AHS, which delivers health care in the province, said Monday said some surgeries and ambulatory care clinics were being delayed across the province due to the strike.
“AHS is enacting contingency plans to redeploy non-union staff, including managers, wherever possible to cover for missing staff.”
Tan, who first moved to Alberta in 1999 and has practised as a physican for 16 years, said she started having concerns about the state of health care in Alberta, and how cuts could affect her ability to care for her patients, in December, when the province presented the Alberta Medical Association with its “framework for consultation.”
At that time, she was optimistic that any proposed cuts would be reversed. When the pandemic hit in March, she said, she felt sure the government would delay or reconsider any reductions in health-care spending.
As physicians have faced the unprecedented challenge of caring for patients while also trying to keep themselves and their families safe, Tan said, she and other health professionals feel as though they’re under attack by a government that has no sympathy for the sacrifices they’ve made. “I can’t even describe how the stress level was just from a pandemic alone,” Tan said. “We’re singularly focused on keeping our community safe, and the government still is attacking us.”
Since December, when she joined protests to highlight proposed cuts to health care, she has watched as the dispute between medical professionals and the province has escalated.
“In less than 12 months, we’re here, picking up our lives and uprooting our family,” she said Monday.
Last year, Alberta’s nurses union raised an alarm over provincial plans to eliminate 500 full-time nursing positions. The province has insisted there will be no net reductions in nurses or other front-line staff during the pandemic. In February, the province eliminated its master agreement with the Alberta Medical Association after failed negotiations, citing the need to address ballooning health-care costs. Members said this violated their rights; legal action was threatened.
One of the main points of contention in the negotiations is a disagreement over how and for what services doctors can bill the province. Although total physician compensation was unchanged in the 2020-21 provincial budget, a new funding framework would change how doctors are paid.
One of the final straws for Tan, was an announcement this month by Health Minister Shandro, who said the government would be cutting as many as 11,000 health jobs to save money during the pandemic. He said nurses and front-line clinical staff would not be affected.
Some of the cuts are to come from further contracting out of laundry and lab services.
“They’re what keeps the hospital safe, we need them,” Tan said. “And now we’re threatening their livelihoods and their job security and their pensions and their benefits.”
Premier Jason Kenney and other government officials have repeatedly stated that Alberta doctors receive the best compensation in Canada.
Tan accused the government of being “mean spirited” in its public remarks, suggesting doctors are greedy for wanting to discuss billing changes.
“They were painting us as distrustful and as the enemy when we really are speaking out not for own pay cheques, but really because we see what this is doing to patient care,” she said.