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October 15, 2020 - No. 70
Alberta Government's Mass Layoffs of Health Care Workers
The Need to Raise the Demand to
Stop Paying the Rich Becomes Increasingly Urgent   
• Health Care Unions Condemn Privatization and Mass Layoffs
• Kenney and His Government Cannot Be Trusted with Our Public Health Care System
- Friends of Medicare
• How the Deals Are Made
- Peggy Morton
Alberta Government's Mass Layoffs of Health Care Workers
The government of Jason Kenney in Alberta is using its majority to hand
over as much of Alberta as possible to private interests in the most
egregious way possible. On October 13, in the midst of soaring cases of
COVID-19, Minister of Health Tyler Shandro confirmed that the
government is proceeding with the layoff of 11,000 health care
workers and that one sector after another of the health system will be
privatized.
Laundry services in rural Alberta will be the first service to be
privatized, eliminating 400 jobs in communities hard-hit by the
economiccrisis. Medical labs
across the province are to be contracted out to one of the companies
comprising the global medical laboratory cartel, resulting in 2,000
layoffs. Alberta Health Services will continue reducing the number of
nurses in the system through attrition during the pandemic and proceed
with layoffs to eliminate the equivalent of 500 full-time registered nursing positions, affecting
750 nurses, once the pandemic is declared over. Apparently the
contracting out of housekeeping and food services will be delayed
because of the pandemic, but will also proceed with 4,000 housekeeping
jobs
and 3,000 food services jobs to be eliminated.
The United Conservative Party (UCP) claims that the privatization of
these jobs will save $600 million but even Minister Shandro admitted
that this depends on the contracts yet to be negotiated and signed with
the private interests. The usual practice is to pay the private corporations
even more while these narrow private interests pay the workers much
less than the standards which currently exist. They do not adequately train
workers and they downgrade the working conditions and services provided.
All of this is done during the COVID-19 pandemic which itself
illustrates how the privatization measures and downgrading of services
and treatment of the workers exacerbate the health care crisis. It is
unconscionable.
What the Alberta government is doing is a good example of why at
this time Canadians must not confer majority governments to any party
seeking to come to power. They rule with impunity to push pay-the-rich
schemes and simply run roughshod over those among the working people
and population who are affected by their decisions.
 Privatization
is all about the rich seizing the decision-making power to take over
the public domain. The state is restructured so that any public
authority whatsoever is eliminated. This means the people have no
recourse within the system to hold governments or the private
employers, whose ownership is often not even known, to account.
The damage to Canada's social fabric is irreparable. As if the
layoffs announced on October 8 are not damaging enough, a draft leaked
to the CBC is said to contain many other draconian measures including
legislated cuts to wages, elimination of physician clinic stipends and
other additional cuts, increases to accommodation fees for seniors in
continuing care, introduction of a co-pay for home care, and shifting
more patients from long-term care to designated supportive living. It
also includes potential consolidation of rural hospital services,
including emergency departments and closure of some diagnostic imaging
and laboratory sites, with more layoffs. This would force rural
residents to travel longer distances for services. Once the government
learned that the CBC had a copy of the draft, the Minister of Health
called a hasty press conference, and produced a “new draft”
in which almost everything but the layoffs suddenly disappeared. Not
only have sweeping draconian measures been drafted under the direction
of the corporation infamous for serving narrow private interests
E&Y, but the government is now attempting to conceal its plans.
If people do not agree to submit to the decisions to privatize
health care, they are threatened with violence. It is unsustainable. It
shows that the people must take up the challenge of how to hold
governments to account. The main battle at this time must take place in
the court of public opinion with the workers themselves and their
defence
organizations and political formations speaking out against the
announced measures and in favour of alternatives. This is courageously
being done across the country and must be stepped up further.
Unions representing health care workers in Alberta strongly
condemned the United Conservative Party's (UCP) announcement that it
would proceed with privatization of medical labs, laundry, housekeeping
and food services in health care facilities and continue to reduce the
number of nurses in Alberta hospitals.
Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE)
At
a media conference immediately following Shandro's press conference,
AUPE President Guy Smith said AUPE members will take whatever action is
necessary to stop the cuts which include 9,700 jobs of AUPE members
providing laundry, housekeeping and food
services.
"Today [Tuesday, October 13], Health Minister Shandro confirmed his
duplicitous plans to cut more jobs after promising to create more. The
UCP is downgrading Alberta's public health care system by forcing
already over-worked staff to do more with less. The job cuts for
nursing care staff and doctors, and the mass privatization ploy, are
all recommendations from the government's $2-million Ernst & Young
report, which it commissioned back in 2019 to help them find ways to
cut corners in AHS [Alberta Health Services].
 "Now
that we know exactly what the damage is, we can keep prepping ourselves
for the biggest fight of our lives," says Smith. "Our AHS members are
already fighting for strong contract language to stop the sell-off of
housekeeping, food services and laundry jobs. We plan on winning this
protection, but if we do not, strike action is on the
table."
While the Jason Kenney government promised to create jobs in
Alberta, Smith says it's actually "a job-destroying government. This
brutal attack on jobs is going to hurt working Albertans and small
communities across the province. This government kicks Albertans when
they're down, exploiting a pandemic that they're failing to manage by
killing jobs and endangering health care at the exact moment we need it
most."
Smith adds: "It's disingenuous for the Minister to say privatization
won't result in 'net reductions' and only a 'change of employer,'
because we know the first thing private and for-profit companies do
when they snatch up our jobs is cut wages, pensions and benefits for
hardworking staff. And everyday Albertans are the ones who pay the
price
-- the patients, seniors and people with disabilities who are at the
receiving end of a downgraded service."
Private companies will often resort to layoffs early in their
contracts with government to boost their bottom line. Staff end up
working short, run off their feet by demanding bosses who go after our
first line of defence: union protections.
Rotting food, dirty linens, viral outbreaks, dangerous lab mix-ups:
all are cited as a result of privatization in general support services
across the globe. The media has also already confirmed Alberta patients
will be paying more out-of-pocket for items like crutches and casts.
"There are no 'savings' in this botched plan," says Smith. "All I
see are businesses profiting off the pain of patients and care-centre
residents."
AUPE's licensed practical nurses and health care aides will also be
impacted by Shandro's attack on the public care system, after he
confirmed over 800 clinical AHS jobs will be eliminated through
attrition, meaning even more short-staffed floors and longer wait times
in the near future, AUPE said.
"Is this really how the UCP are repaying frontline health care
workers after they risked their health and well-being to care for us
through this pandemic, when we need them most?" adds Smith. "This is
pathetic, and we're not going to let it happen."
Health Sciences Association of Alberta
"This government has decided to tear apart its best line of defence
against the ongoing pandemic. To be clear, this is about privatizing
health care. Money isn't being saved; it's being transferred to private
pockets instead of being used for patient care," Health Sciences
Association of Alberta (HSAA) President Mike Parker said.
"Privatization costs more and could very easily result in poorer health
outcomes during this pandemic and the next one. Just days after again
praising the work done by our lab professionals, the current Health
Minister has targeted the very people he claims are protecting
Albertans in his misguided drive to privatize health care. Support
workers are clearly frontline workers. It takes a team to make health
care happen. Docs and other health care professionals cannot do their
work in dirty facilities or in unsanitary conditions.
"The Health Minister's announcement today is shameful. He has
abdicated all responsibility for the health and safety of Albertans. He
has instead decided his role is to fire highly-trained public health
professionals in order to facilitate the transfer of our public health
resources into private hands.
"These 'positions' represent thousands of Albertans who will be
added to the list of the unemployed. That's thousands upon thousands
who will no longer be contributing to our economy. And that's thousands
and thousands who will no longer be there to 'protect' Albertans."
United Nurses of Alberta (UNA)
The Alberta government is once against throwing health care in
Alberta into chaos, right in the middle of the largest health care
emergency in a century, UNA Labour Relations Director David Harrigan
said, calling the action dangerous and irresponsible.
"This morning's promise by Health Minister Tyler Shandro that
there will be no layoffs of frontline nurses when it lays off 11,000
health care employees contradicts statements by Alberta Health Services
in a letter received this morning [October 13]," said UNA Labour
Relations Director David Harrigan. The letter from AHS stated clearly
that it plans to proceed with its previously announced layoff of 500
nursing full-time equivalents, which UNA calculates will put 750 nurses
out of work.
 Shandro was careful to say that there would be no layoffs during the pandemic, Harrigan said.
"There
is nothing to prevent this government from prematurely declaring the
pandemic to be over whenever it pleases, so this is a relatively
meaningless promise," Harrigan said. Moreover, he noted, Shandro
referred several times to eliminating
nursing positions through attrition, so nursing positions will continue
to be lost.
Last week, Harrigan added, AHS responded to UNA's request for
clarification about the Ernst & Young report by saying that AHS was
continuing to work with the Health Ministry on implementation of the
Ernst & Young report's recommendations for changes to AHS
operations and that no response from the government was
expected until later in the fall. "So it sounds like they came up with
a 79-page implementation plan over the long weekend," he said.
"Stability in the midst of a pandemic won't be achieved by short-staffed hospitals and burnt out health care workers," Harrigan
concluded, noting that positions are already silently disappearing in
the midst of the pandemic, and have been for months, leaving nurses
short staffed and overworked and patient safety compromised.
- Friends of Medicare -
Today's release of the AHS Performance Review Proposed
Implementation Plan is, in short, the biggest betrayal of Albertans by
any government.
 "Once
again, this Premier and his government are callously advancing plans to
suit their aggressive privatization agenda in health care," says Sandra
Azocar, Executive Director of Friends of Medicare. "Kenney's UCP
government continues to demonstrate nothing but disdain for the women
and men working on health care's front lines.
Considering how central they have proven themselves in the province's
pandemic response, this whole plan is an insult to health care workers,
and it's a betrayal of the patients who depend on them."
The aggressive changes outlined in the proposed implementation plan
are not unexpected, but are yet another step in this government's plan
to privatize our health care. We saw them take a step with the release
of the MacKinnon report back in September 2019, and another big step
with the release of AHS Performance Review in February.
Both reports recommended massive restructuring of our health care
system through major privatization, and both rely heavily on Fraser
Institute data, the reliability of which was most recently called into
question by the BC Supreme Court in their landmark Cambie Case ruling:
"It is unclear whether any general conclusions can be drawn from the
Fraser Institute surveys, even if these surveys could generally be
relied upon as providing reliable data (a proposition I seriously
question)."
Despite the major questions as to the reliability of the two reports
remaining, the Alberta government has not hesitated in capitalizing on
them as the ideological fodder they need to accelerate the process of
privatizing our health care system through contracting out and reducing
the health care services available to Albertans.
The AHS review, contracted by American accounting firm Ernst &
Young for over $2 million, was intended to find inefficiencies in the
system. This report contained 57 recommendations that, by their
estimate, could result in $1.9 billion in savings, though Ernst &
Young cautioned those figures don't represent expected, or even
achievable,
actual savings, and Health Minister Shandro indicated at the time that
not all recommendations were feasible, or would be implemented.
 Following
its release, Health Minister Shandro turned the AHS review report over
to an AHS implementation team, which was tasked with reporting on their
own recommendations in 100 days. As this date was five months delayed
by the province's pandemic response, nothing had been made public until
today. The 82-page plan outlines
extensive cuts across our public health care system, acutely in line
with the recommendations made by the initial Ernst & Young review.
While the Health Minister has publicly stated that the implementation
will be determined by AHS and guided by Operational Best Practices, a
leaked document acquired by CBC reveals that Minister Shandro had
in fact directed AHS to produce plans to implement all of the
recommendations in the Ernst & Young report, except for a few he
determined were off the table.
Included in the proposal are plans to contract out in-hospital food,
laundry and environmental services, removing nurses' collective
agreement provisions, introducing home care co-pays, ramping up
chartered surgical services, and reconfiguring rural emergency
department, acute care and maternity/obstetric services -- among many
others. This
plan has the potential to turn our health care dollars, resources and
staff over to private companies which will be subsidized by public
health care funding. Most pressingly, the government has forecasted
11,000 health care job losses, affecting up to 16,000 workers across
the province.
While in today's press conference, Minister Shandro said there would
be no impact to nurses or frontline health workers for the duration of
the pandemic, this contradicts the letter received this morning by the
United Nurses of Alberta, which clearly states that AHS intends to
proceed with its previously announced layoff of 500 nursing
full-time equivalents, which equates to 750 nurses out of work,
according to UNA's estimation.
"Rather than building upon the solid foundation that we have in our
health care, this government is choosing to sell it off to the highest
bidder without presenting Albertans with so much as a business plan to
show how these proposed 'savings' would impact patients and the care
they are able to access," says Azocar. "Rather than recognizing
the vital importance of our health care providers, they are choosing to
cut 11,000 good jobs at a time when many Albertans are already out of
work. Albertans need to ask themselves if this is the recovery they
envisioned for their province. Frankly, we demand better."
AHS's plan, as directed by Minister Shandro, will see no less than
the decimation of our public health care. Despite Minister Shandro's
attempt to spin it, contracting out is not just a change in employers,
it's a change in the way we deliver health care and a clear move
towards private health care. As we continue to navigate the immediate
and
long-term implications of this pandemic, Alberta's government is trying
to suggest that the path forward lies in laying off thousands of health
care workers, and privatizing our health care. Albertans should know
better than to trust them.
- Peggy Morton - In the lead up to Budget 2020, on February 3 the Kenney government released a
"performance review summary report" of Alberta Health
Service (AHS), conducted by the accounting firm Ernst & Young
(E&Y). The report contained 57 recommendations and what the
government called "72 savings opportunities to improve the quality and
long-term sustainability of health services." In releasing the report,
the government stated it had accepted the report, with two important
exceptions: there would be no rural hospital closures or urban trauma
centre consolidations.
 Ernst & Young (E&Y) is one of the foremost masters of sucking dry
companies -- and their active and retired workers -- that go into
bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and around the world and then
whitewashing the scene of any evidence of crime. It is notorious for
its self-serving reports and recommendations which always declare a
benefit to be gained from privatization and handing over all control of
public services to private interests. Firms like E&Y who are in the
business of developing public-private partnerships and other forms of
privatization never mention that the benefits accrue to a tiny
minority of ultra-rich parasites at the expense of the workers who
produce
added value and the people who need and have a right to the public
services.
The process of using neo-liberal accounting cartels and "panels"
chosen to produce pre-determined results is part of the restructuring
of the state. Rich private interests are paid to extol the virtues of
pay-the-rich schemes from which they as well as their clients benefit. The Alberta government has concentrated administration
of health
care in a single health authority, Alberta Health Services (AHS), but
it is clear that the AHS is not directing this current
restructuring, but has been reduced to implementing the decisions made
by the global oligarchs and delivered through mechanisms like the
E&Y report.
Consultants like E&Y are not hired by governments to find
efficiencies so as to improve the delivery of health care. Their role is
to provide a pretext for restructuring of the state and handing over
public services to private interests. Their "reports" are completely
predictable -- contract out services, attack workers' working and
living
conditions, reduce services, and impose additional user fees on the
people. Workers are declared to be a "cost" which is to be cut to the
bone in order to pay the rich, both by diverting funding from health
care and by increasing the amount of the remaining funding paid to the
parasites through lucrative contracts. The details of these contracts
are
never published, as the government says they are private business
information.
Health care funding comes from the portion of the added-value
created by workers claimed by governments. Privatization and cuts
to health care funding are an attack not only on the health care
workers but also on the living standards of the working people as a
whole. To call this "savings" is nonsensical. To speak of the human
factor,
the workers who provide health and services as a "cost" is completely
irrational when there would be no health care system without them. But
this is how the rich see things -- anything that does not go directly
into their pockets is a "cost."
 The
pandemic has provided yet more proof of the terrible consequences of
private control over seniors' care residences, where the majority of
deaths from COVID-19 have occurred. Study after study has shown the
increases in infectious disease when housekeeping in hospitals has been
privatized. Communities across Alberta have fought to get
the food monopolies out of long-term care so their loved ones could
have nourishing and culturally appropriate food. The conclusion that
there should not be a penny of private profit in health care and seniors'
care is clear. But governments accept no responsibility for the
tragedies that occur as a result of their anti-social offensive, or the
hardships
the working people face. Jason Kenney declares that bringing COVID-19
under control is a matter of personal responsibility, although
apparently not his own.
A health care "insider" told Workers' Forum, "E&Y doesn't
know anything about health care; they don't know anything about
Alberta. Other than that, it was a good report." Never mind patient
suffering and staff burn-out, we just provide the numbers and are well
paid for it is their refrain. But it is no joke. The pandemic has shown
who can be trusted with decision-making and who cannot. It has shown
that the Kenney government cannot be trusted. It has shown that private
operators motivated by maximum profit cannot be trusted. And it has
shown that it is the health care workers who can be trusted, who know
what is needed, who are fighting for the conditions needed to
bring the pandemic under control, and who put themselves on the line
every day to care for the people. Who decides is the crucial question.
(To access articles individually click on the black headline.)
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