Editor:
The following is an edited version of a letter sent to West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler and shared with Coast Reporter.
The Sunshine Coast Labour Council wishes to bring attention to the increased spending on for-profit care inside our public health care facilities in B.C.
Recently, the federal government announced increasing funding to support the health care system. This financial support is badly needed to support our very strained workers; however, we worry the funds will go to the continued privatization within the public system.
One example of this privatization is agency staffing: agency staff are contract workers, part of for-profit privatization within our own system and can cost as much as four times what permanent staff with the same qualifications earns per hour. Agency staff is not rare – in some facilities, agency workers can make up to 70 per cent of some staff. Agencies are private-for-profit corporations, which cover nearly all health care professionals, but their staff are not protected as workers; they do not enjoy the benefits and security of union employ or the full cost they are contracted out for – the agency taking a large portion as profit. Recent newspaper articles have reported the cost of for-profit workers to BC taxpayers has skyrocketed from $8.7 million in 2019 to $64 million in 2022.
The addition of these staff to our health care teams is detrimental to morale: it causes resentment due to the wage discrepancy between co-workers doing the same duties.
Systemic, revolutionary changes are needed across Canada to train and attract more health care workers, and programs must be more affordable and accessible. Finally, any agency providing short-term health care professionals to fill temporary vacancies must be a public employer with unionized, protected workers who enjoy wages and rights on par with full-time employees.
We urge you all to join in the fight to keep health care public.
Kelsey Oxley
Crystal Penner
Miyuki Shinkai
Sunshine Coast Labour Union