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Union head blasts government over job cuts

Feb 7, 2017 | 4:03 PM

The head of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Union of Public Employees doesn’t believe the premier has a plan to bring the province back into the black.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall painted a dire economic picture on Monday when he announced no options were off the table to decrease the $1.2 billion provincial deficit. The government previously said the deficit would be $1 billion.

Among the options considered is cutting 4,900 provincial health-care jobs, although Wall said publicly he wants to avoid that route.

Tom Graham, president of CUPE Saskatchewan, said he wasn’t surprised when Wall make the announcement but was disappointed.

“This is not the way you handle the situation, in my opinion,” he said. “If the economy is in a bit of a slump you don’t add to it by getting rid of 5,000 people and exasperating the problem. The premier has no plan. You cut wages and lay people off, then what are you going to do?”

Graham criticized the premier for thinking short-term and said the decisions were politically motivated.

He said even though there’s higher unemployment and a downturn in the resource sector, it’s up to the government to turn that around. He argued by laying off workers, there will be fewer people to buy and support local economies and fewer people paying off mortgages.

Graham also believes cutting health-care jobs will cause more harm within the health-care sector.

“This is not going to address anything around wait times, which is the biggest issue,” he said. “It is just going to make it worse. It means our hospitals are going to be less clean because there’s already a shortage of cleaning staff. It has been proven that this leads to more infections and more health-care problems. It’s just a spiral down cycle.”

Graham said the reduction in staff levels could be accomplished through workers retiring but hesitated to say if it would solve provincial economic woes. He said attrition doesn’t address the bigger issue of managing the province and ensuring services are provided to taxpayers.

PaNOW attempted to contact the Ministry of Health to clarify if there was a connection between the recent announcement by the premier and the amalgamation of the province’s health authorities.

Instead of an interview, a government statement was emailed to paNOW which said cutting 4,900 health care jobs is only one scenario and no decisions have been made. The email also stated the amalgamation of health authorities is a separate process and not related to the options to reduce the deficit.

According to the province, work is being done to try and minimize the impact to front-line services and the single health authority is expected to save $10 to $20 million by the 2018-19 fiscal year.

Graham called the changes ‘smoke and mirrors.’

“You cannot take a major service and major industry like health care and dramatically revamp it within three months, four months,” he said. “It’s a complicated system and you don’t just snap your fingers and fix it overnight.”

Graham added the only thing the union can do now is keep making public statements to voice concerns. He also encourages fellow members to speak out.

CUPE Sask represents more than 29,000 members in the province from various sectors including health care and education.

 

Email: Jeff.Labine@jpbg.ca.

On Twitter: @labinereporter.