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Laundry deal that will see North Sask jobs lost now inked

Dec 18, 2013 | 5:58 AM

The approximately 100 employees at Prince Albert’s North Sask Laundry & Support know their days are numbered, and a new contract gives them more details on who’s taking over.

A news release issued last week said K-Bro Linen and 3sHealth (Health Shared Services Saskatchewan) had signed a 10-year contract.

It outlined a June 2015 finish date for construction on K-Bro’s new laundry facility in Regina, which will centralize all scrubs, linen, bedding, towel and other cleaning services for the province’s hospitals.

Andrew Will, CEO of 3sHealth, points out that, in many ways, the contract confirms details that were shared when the K-Bro takeover was announced in May.

“The transition of the services from the previous sites to the new site will take place over the following six months, so we’re getting confirmation that the timeline is still what we expected it to be,” he said.

The term ‘transition’ means the 100 employees will no longer have jobs with North Sask Laundry.

Local CUPE 3736 president Anita Labossiere takes issue with the wording of the release.

“They are not very clear and up front with some of the things that were in their media release. One of their examples, that it says right in the media release that if transition activities dictate an earlier closure. What exactly does that mean? It’s not clarified at all. They say up to two years and it’s very possible that they could be done sooner or it could take longer,” she said.

Labossiere added that this has created a sense of insecurity for the people she works with.

“People go to work everyday wondering if today is the day that they get their notice. There is no job security. There is no guarantee,” she said. “It’s very emotional. How would you feel going to work every day and not knowing?”

Will explained that 3sHealth is responsible for bringing on the new service and new plant. It’s North Sask Laundry’s responsibility to provide notice, and share information on the business’s closure with its staff.

As such, North Sask Laundry is required to follow its collective agreement with union employees for giving employees enough advance notice that they’re losing their jobs.

“We’ll be providing as much information as we can to the North Sask Laundry operation as to how the new build is progressing with the plant in Regina and when we expect the transition to take place for the North Sask Laundry service. And we will be providing as much notice as we possibly can of that,” Will said.

As far as the dollar value of the contract, it will change over time.

“How it works is, we have an initial price for the laundry, and then it escalates over the 10-year period based on CPI, consumer price index, and wage rates,” Will said.

For the first year, it will cost $17 million, which is $6 million less than what is paid for hospital laundry facilities in the province right now. However, that $17 million could fluctuate, depending on the volume of linen that goes through the facility.

Despite not knowing a specific cost, Will said they will be lowering the overall cost of laundry services.

Labossiere reiterated her view that money saved is not worth the jobs lost. According to Will, in the province there are 220 full-time equivalencies at the current laundry facilities. That is a total of about 350 employees who will no longer have jobs following the transition period.

Labossiere is critical of putting that money into the hands of an Alberta-based company.

“All that money is not gonna go into Saskatchewan anymore, it’s going into the hands of a private, for-profit company,” she said.

In addition, she takes issue with how she found out about the contract signing.

“The fact that they finalized everything with K-Bro, they should have allowed the people that are being affected to know before it hit the media. I think that would just be common courtesy to talk to the staff that’s affected before.”

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk