OPSEU aims to shame PRHC into dropping wage freeze
The union president representing 244 clerical workers at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) who are about to have their wages frozen says he’s out to “shame” the hospital into reversing its stance.
Warren “Smokey” Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said Friday that a campaign is being organized to call out the hospital for downgrading the 244 jobs in a recent re-evaluation — and freezing the wages for five to eight years.
Thomas said the union will write letters to the provincial government (notably to Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod, who is also the minister responsible for women’s issues, since almost all the clerical employees affected are women).
He also said there would be a media advertising campaign, including a full-page ad in today’s Examiner.
Thomas said the goal is to get the hospital to reverse its decision on freezing those wages before the plan is implemented in the new year.
“It’s a lot easier to stop something from happening, rather than try to roll it back,” he said.
At issue is the recent re-evaluation of 244 clerical jobs at the hospital, most of them part-time and almost all filled by women.
It’s expected that the 244 workers — cancer-care intake workers, for example, or people working in finance — will have their wages frozen.
No comment was available from the hospital on Friday after a late-day request for interview was emailed out.
But earlier this week, PRHC communications director Michelene Ough wrote in a statement to The Examiner that a job evaluation committee was struck earlier this year to “objectively review” all the hospital’s clerical positions.
“A broad review of these positions had not been done for many years, and many of these jobs have changed significantly in that time,” she wrote, citing factors such as improvement in technology as well as changes in education and experience requirements.
But Thomas said on Friday the workers are not well-paid in the first place. Although he didn’t say how much they’re making, he said “you don’t get rich” on these clerical jobs.
Meanwhile the ad in today’s Examiner points out that the hospital’s CEO has had a 21 per cent pay raise in the last four years.
Dr. Peter McLaughlin, president and CEO of PRHC, was the highest-paid public sector bureaucrat in Peterborough for the second consecutive year in 2017. He earned $379,999.42 in salary and $12,000 in taxable benefits in 2017.