Vera Tsotsos is a ward clerk at The Scarborough Hospital. After 19 years on the job she received notice in the spring that her full-time position would be eliminated. Her last day is today. “I would not recommend my job to my daughter or my granddaughter,” says Tsotsos, who sees the damage done by the constant insecurity her colleagues face.
While she could have likely moved into another opening at the hospital, she chose to leave instead. “I had enough,” Tsotsos told us.
Hospital support workers require considerable skill and training to do their jobs effectively. Yet they are often the first to be let go when money gets tight. Ontario hospitals are shedding jobs to balance years of zero-based funding from the provincial government. In the process, they are also sending years of valuable experience out the door.
It’s time that the OHA and the Ontario government come clean and reveal the real cost of their austerity agenda.
In the coming weeks we will be highlighting some “straight talk” from OPSEU’s hospital support workers that features the work they do and the challenges they face doing their best to serve the public. The first series of vignettes was shot at OPSEU’s annual convention in May.
OPSEU Diablogue 