February 22, 2012 - No. 22

Alberta

Health Care Workers Speak Out

Wildcat walkout of Alberta health care workers, near Rockyview hospital, southwest Calgary, February 16, 2012.

Health Care Is a Right!
• Health Care Workers Speak Out
• No to Private Clinics and Two-Tier Health Care! - Peggy Morton
• Hospital Workers Are Fighting to Defend the Public Good

Manufacturing Yes, Nation-Wrecking No!
• More Layoffs at Owens Corning Fiberglass Plant - Peggy Askin

Our Water Is Not for Sale!
• Honouring Nestlé Chairman Dishonours University of Alberta - Dougal MacDonald

Health Care Is a Right!

Health Care Workers Speak Out

Workers in more than 20 cities and towns across Alberta held one-day wildcat strikes on February 16 to defend their rights and dignity. The actions spread across the province after workers at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton set up their picket line. (For coverage see TML Daily, February 17, 2012 - No. 20)

TML Daily spoke with many workers on the picket lines in Edmonton and Calgary. Over and over the workers said that they want respect for the important work they do. Workers gave examples of what has happened to their wages over many years. One worker who started work in 1986 at $9.99 is earning $8.62 more after 26 years. When inflation is taken into account (and this does not include increases in the price of food, gas, or electricity) it turns out she is making 34 cents more than in 1986. Since her 1986 wage was at the starting rate, not her current job rate, this shows that real wages for these workers have actually gone down. Workers told TML Daily that they work every day in an environment where they are exposed to infectious diseases, and then have to contend with a workload that leads to exhaustion. And they wonder why we get sick, the workers said. They stressed that it is not acceptable that health care workers are denied wages and working conditions necessary for their own health and well-being and that of their families.

The many examples that the workers provided showed that in defending their own rights, health care workers are also fighting to defend patient care. Fighting for a standard of services provides a safe and healthy environment for patients and staff alike. The workers are a bulwark in the fight against privatization, two-tier health care and wrecking of the public health care system. To speak about quality patient care without caring for the staff who provide that care and service is irrational. Hospital support staff and all health care workers deserve all-out support in their fight to defend their rights and the rights of all.

What the Workers Had to Say

• "There is such a big turnout because we consider it a slap in the face that Alberta Health Services offered us less than a mediator's report we rejected by 95 per cent. Health care workers have had enough of being undervalued and not treated with respect. The fact that what we had planned as information pickets turned into a wildcat walkout across the province shows how strongly we as health care workers feel about winning our rights and improving our benefits. A large group came here today from Health Sciences. They are in the same situation we are. We all need to stand together, the entire health care sector and all workers."

• "They are offering us a lump sum payment this year, which is even less than the mediator's report. They are trying to tell us we are not worth anything."

• "For many of us it is a choice of paying the rent or buying groceries, we can't afford to pay for both. One cheque goes to pay the rent, the other is for everything else. As things stand, we cannot afford even to buy healthy food, we can't even afford Kraft mac and cheese, we have to buy the no-name product."

• "They have only guaranteed us a two per cent raise over the next three years. Our LAPP [Local Authorities Pension Plan -- Alberta's main public sector pension plan -- TML Ed. Note] payments have gone up and that takes our increase. How do we pay for the increased costs of food, rent and everything else?"

• "Every day we deliver services to people who live in Alberta. We take care of them. We deserve that our families are properly cared for as well."

• "We work as therapy assistants. Across the province, therapy assistants are in three different unions all with different pay scales. We want parity with the other unions. We have been trying to get this resolved for a long time. We do not even have a job description."

• "When we get sick, we are harassed. They call us at home to put pressure on us, and then force us to go to the doctor for a doctor's note before we can return to work. When a doctor says, 'You need to be on light duties,' they just ignore it."

• "We want fair treatment. We want to be recognized. We want respect for the important work that we do. When I have to work Christmas day, I should receive the same premium as others do. Other unions get paid double time and we do not."

Increased Workloads Are Not Sustainable

• "Our workloads keep increasing. Where there used to be three people to do the work, now there is only one. We keep getting pulled from our areas and then we are asked why we can't get our work done."

• "I work in Environmental Services (Housekeeping). I am now working in a pilot project where my two-person team is expected to clean 33 patient rooms a day plus 10 to 15 discharge beds. There is no way that we can do this job the way it should be done with this workload."

• "What would be better? To spend millions of dollars in research trying to find new drugs for the superbugs, or to keep hospitals clean and prevent people getting these infections? How many people have died because of multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus or other superbugs? Think of all the pain and suffering that this has caused. This is a very serious matter. It is about life. If the hospital is not clean, then no one is safe."

• "I am a porter responsible for taking patients to their tests, examinations, procedures and so on. We walk 12-13 kilometres in the course of our day. With the level of staffing we have, if one porter is off sick everything breaks down and gets behind. Patients do not get to their tests on time and patient care deteriorates. We are part of the health care team but our work is undervalued. We need to fight. We are out here to tell the truth about patient care and the conditions we are working under."

• "I work in the kitchen. We have gone from a situation where we cooked quality food in the hospital that was healthy and considered part of the healing process, to having all pre-made food that has lost its quality. How can people get healthy? If we have to take action to improve our conditions and improve quality care for patients, as the nurses have done many times, that is what we will continue to do."

• "The government is trying to break the unions. They are privatizing everything. For example, more and more eye surgery is being carried out at the private clinics, which we could be doing at our eye centre."

Management "Flexibility"

• "I am scheduled to work all these different shifts, 6:45 am one day, then 8:45 and then 2:45 and so on. How am I supposed to make arrangements for child care? Then they change our shifts without consulting us and we have to start all over again arranging our child care."

Wildcat walkout at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, February 16, 2012.

No to Private Clinics and Two-Tier Health Care!

- Peggy Morton -

Vancouver businessman Don Copeman has announced that he will be opening a private, elite clinic in Edmonton in March, 2012. Copeman opened a private clinic in Calgary in 2008. The clinic operates as a members-only club. The "elite program" costs $3,900 for an individual to "join" and an annual fee of $3,000 a year after that or a $9,300 initial fee for a family of four and $7,590 each year. Copeman states that the clinic will have a patient roster of about 2,000 and about 30 staff.

The clinic will bill Alberta Health Care for all insured services. More and more Canadians cannot find a family doctor and wait times for referrals to specialists are many months long. The Copeman clinics are designed so that those who can afford to pay these large annual fees will have guaranteed access. Those whose doctors have left their practices to join the private clinics will be left desperately trying to find a doctor. The clinic will accept as patients people who have not paid the annual fee only after the "elite members" have been looked after.

According to Copeman, the clinics are designed for a corporate clientele. The same corporations who are driving the anti-social agenda to withdraw funding from health care will make arrangements to have the health care needs of their executives provided. That is, the fees will be paid from the wealth created by the working class and people, while the workers, both active and retired, search in vain for a family doctor and wait many months for referral to a specialist when they are ill. Such unbridled greed and corruption is having a devastating effect on the people, especially the seniors and those with chronic illnesses who are most in need of care.

The cynicism of these privateers knows no bounds. Copeman was quoted in the Edmonton Journal as saying that the clinic would appeal to patients interested in "very progressive" and "world-leading" preventive health-care services. As if only the rich want "world-leading" services! Naturally the pathetic assertion that this is about "choice" is also parroted by the monopoly media. As it gets more and more difficult to find a family doctor and waits to see the doctor get longer, the rich should have the "choice" to have medical care. If this "choice" of the rich means that others will no longer have a family doctor, well that is just collateral damage in their eyes.

Extra Billing

It is obvious that the "membership fee" is extra billing which is supposed to be banned by the Canada Health Act. Extra billing is also prohibited by Alberta legislation. When Copeman signalled that he would open a clinic in Alberta several years ago, Alberta Health indicated that it would be considered a violation of the Act. But in 2008 when the Calgary clinic was again proposed, the Minister of Health said he didn't see any problem. A review is not needed, he said, because the BC Medical Services Commission said the BC Copeman clinic, opened in 2005, was not violating any laws. Apart from anything else, this completely ignored the fact that Alberta law is being violated and a decision made in BC has no bearing whatsoever. Section 9 (1) of the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act, "Extra Billing," states: "No physician or dentist who is opted into the Plan who provides insured services to a person shall charge or collect from any person an amount in addition to the benefits payable by the Minister for those insured services." A doctor who contravenes this can be deemed to be "opted out," that is, unable to bill Alberta Health Care. But this is of no concern to the authorities. When it comes to taking up their social responsibility to ensure the rights of all to health and social programs, the response is "don't look at me."

The "no strings attached" approach of the Harper dictatorship to health care is opening the privatization floodgates. The federal government has completely disengaged, saying that the health and well-being of Canadians is none of their affair. The Alberta government has a detailed secret privatization agenda on which Health Minister Fred Horne has been point man for years.

The right to health care must be provided with a guarantee! Two-tier medicine is an affront to the rights which belong to all people by virtue of being human. Governments must be held to account for their refusal to uphold their social responsibility.

Hospital Workers Are Fighting to
Defend the Public Good

The Alberta Union of Public Employees' (AUPE) website "Your Working People" informs that every year more than 250,000 Canadians get a hospital acquired infection, resulting in more than 8,000 deaths. "In fact good housekeeping remains a hospital's best form of security against superbugs. Given that multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or C. difficile spores can be found on ordinary hospital surfaces such as countertops, cabinets, and bed rails, careful and regular cleaning is essential for patient safety." The AUPE provides examples of how doubling housekeeping staff in one hospital led to a 90 per cent reduction of the spread of superbug MRSA and on the other hand infection rates and deaths soared with privatization and cuts.

Hospitals which have adopted strategies which include rigorous cleaning of environmental surfaces as well as patient screening, hand-washing and judicious use of antibiotics have been able to reduce infection rates by 80 to 90 per cent. Conversely, contracting-out and reduced cleaning budgets have led to more infections and deaths.

Despite these undeniable facts and the terrible toll of pain, illness and death caused by inadequate resources for cleaning hospitals, the information provided by hospital workers shows that in the face of the growing problem of hospital acquired infection and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals have reduced the time housekeeping staff are allocated to clean a patient's room.

The aggressive and false marketing of private, for-profit cleaning monopolies has played a big role in the downgrading of public services. One of these monopolies has the motto "sometimes the best way to do something is not to do it at all." They claim they can do the job cheaper and better. What they do not say is that services will be degraded and the claims of workers reduced while more money goes to pay the rich, in unnecessary and wasteful expenditures. Through their 1998 strike, Edmonton hospital workers put the brakes on the privatization of hospital cleaning. But the backward and dangerous outlook of the government and Alberta Health Services that these workers are a "cost" has meant that workloads have continued to climb, putting patients at risk as well as creating stress for the workers.

The guidelines of the U.S. Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) state that daily cleaning and disinfecting of an occupied patient room will take 25 to 30 minutes per room, while a terminal discharge cleaning will take 40 to 45 minutes and up to 60 minutes.

In a pilot project, a two-person team at the Royal Alexandra Hospital is expected to clean 10 - 15 discharge beds and 33 patient rooms during their shift. Even at the low end of recommended times, the staff is being given only about half the time recommended by infection control specialists to perform their work.

Workers are demanding a say in upholding the quality of the services they deliver as well as the right to bargain their wages and working conditions in good faith, a right denied by the drive to privatize everything and criminalize the workers' struggles and make strikes illegal. Hospital support staff fighting for their rights and dignity play a crucial role in defending the public good. Control over public services is an important part of the movement for democratic renewal and control over the direction of the economy.

Manufacturing Yes, Nation-Wrecking No!

More Layoffs at Owens Corning Fiberglass Plant

- Peggy Askin -

In January the Owens Corning fiberglass insulation plant in east Edmonton further cut its production and is now at half capacity. A new round of layoffs put another 16 workers on the street. As well, the jobs of almost the entire office staff, who are not part of the union, were eliminated without notice. The work performed by the office staff was sent to the Owens Corning plant in Toronto and to the Owens Corning head office in Toledo, Ohio. The production workers are represented by the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers Union. The U.S. monopoly Owens Corning is the world's largest manufacturer of fiberglass and related products.

Automation has greatly reduced the workforce, which stands at about 125 workers at full production. There are about 85 workers still at work.

In 2010, Owens Corning forced pension concessions on the workers at the Edmonton plant. Only workers with 30 or more years of seniority retained their full defined benefits plan. Workers with less seniority will receive a defined benefits pension only for the years of service they have already accumulated, and are now enrolled in a savings plan which the company calls a defined contribution plan. New hires will be enrolled in the savings plan.

In addition to the cuts to production and pension concessions, this U.S. global monopoly is carrying out a campaign to eliminate higher paid positions in the plant, disregarding language protecting job classifications and forcing workers in lower paid classifications to do the work. The union is opposing this attempt to run roughshod over the workers' rights and create conditions where the company has free rein to do whatever it wants.

The workers at the plant are being subjected to a barrage of anti-worker arguments from the company as to why production is being cut back and why the workers have no choice but to accept concessions and violations of work rules. Owens Corning claims that cuts to production and concessions are necessary because of the downturn to the housing industry. The facts are that Owens Corning is making these threats despite increased profits in 2011.

Owens Corning cites the rising cost of electricity as a reason why its Edmonton plant is not profitable. The cost of electricity there used to be the cheapest of all its plants, but following deregulation it has become the most costly. The company claims that the insulation division lost millions through most of 2011 although they reached "break even" in the fourth quarter.

Workers at Owens Corning consider the cuts to production, the arbitrary elimination of office jobs and the escalating refusal to abide by workers' contractual rights as indications that the large U.S. monopoly may be preparing to shut down the plant in spite of the fact that the Edmonton plant has a superior product preferred by U.S. customers. This is creating extreme insecurity for these workers and their families.

This fiberglass insulation plant has been operating in Edmonton since 1960. The replacement of the old Foreign Investment Review Act by the Investment Canada Act, one of the first acts of the Mulroney government, opened the floodgates to foreign control of Canadian companies. By the early 1990s the former Fiberglass Canada plant was wholly-owned by Owens Corning.

The Owens Corning plants -- in Canada in Edmonton and Toronto -- at one time produced over 80 per cent of the insulation used in Canada as an essential component in residential and commercial construction. Owens Corning found it most profitable to use the Canadian plants to serve the U.S. market, especially when the Canadian dollar was well below par. Now it is reversing course, moving to serve a diminished U.S. housing market from its U.S. plants. Owens Corning has bought up small plants in the U.S. and converted them so they will be able to supply the U.S. west coast.

Owens Corning is also responding to the "Buy American" policies of the Obama administration. This is leading to the wrecking of Canadian manufacturing, so western Canada will now be forced to "Buy American" as well. One possibility will be that the company retains only a warehouse to ship product from the U.S. while it closes down Canadian production. This wrecking of manufacturing which is being dictated by arrogant foreign monopolies like Owens-Corning and subservient federal and provincial governments is thoroughly irresponsible. Canadians cannot permit governments to cater to foreign monopolies like Owens Corning which slot production into their global needs while the human-centred needs of the workers, their families and the Canadian economy do not factor into the equation.

Our Water Is Not for Sale!

Honouring Nestlé Chairman Dishonours
University of Alberta

- Dougal MacDonald -

University of Alberta students, staff and faculty are opposing the university's decision to confer an honorary doctoral degree on Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, CEO of Nestlé from 1997-2008. Switzerland-based Nestlé, the world's largest multinational food and beverage corporation, is notorious for its anti-worker, anti-people practices. Nestlé has been denounced by unions and others for exploiting workers, union busting, breaking collective agreements, contracting out, factory closings, exploiting farmers, attempted extortion of the government of Ethiopia, unethical marketing of artificial baby milk, illegal extraction of groundwater, pollution, promotion of untested genetically modified foods, fraudulent labelling and attacks on fair trade. Nestlé's chocolate factories have long been supplied with cocoa produced by exploiting child labour under conditions of slave labour, forced labour, beatings, exposure to dangerous pesticides and sex trafficking.

London, UK protest against Nestlé over treatment of its workers in Indonesia, October 13, 2010. (IUF)

As the CEO of such an organization and one who bears major responsibility for its policies, Brabeck-Letmathe dismally fails to qualify on even one of the three criteria for an honorary University of Alberta degree: extraordinary intellectual or artistic achievement; service to the University and to the wider society; and to serve as an example to the institution's student body.

University of Alberta President Dr. Indira Samarasekera claims that the university nominates individuals of different views for degrees so the Nestlé CEO cannot be condemned as an unacceptable choice. She stated: "We give honourary degrees to intellectuals of distinction, controversial or not." This so-called "balanced approach" is a conscious strategy: select some individuals acceptable to the community, then under that cover also select individuals who are outright agents of the monopolies such as Brabeck-Letmathe. Another blatant example of this occurred in 2007 when U.S.-born Hunter Harrison, former CEO of Canadian National Railway, received a degree after putting 9,000 CN railworkers on the street.

President Samarasekera claims Brabeck-Letmathe is being specifically honoured for putting a future global water crisis "on the global agenda." She notes that he helped found and lead the 2030 Water Resource Group, made up of the secretive and scandal-ridden McKinsey management company, the U.S.-controlled World Bank Group, and various water-dependent monopolies, including Nestlé and Coca Cola. She fails to mention that the Water Resource Group operates wholly in the interests of the monopolies. The group's November 2009 185-page report, Charting Our Water Future, concludes that there is too much demand for water, that water is not a human right, and that water must be privatized.

As part of the award ceremony, Brabeck-Letmathe will be participating in a debate on water policy with two other individuals receiving honorary degrees. Clearly his contribution will centre on doing propaganda for the claims in the Water Resource Group report. Giving Letmathe-Brabeck an honourary degree appears to be one way of softening up public opinion for the privatization of Alberta's water. All Albertans should indeed be concerned about the future of our water when Alberta Premier Alison Redford has stated that everything is on the table for discussion when it comes to privatizing public resources and services.

Brabeck is no stranger to Alberta. A May 13, 2011, Calgary Herald headline declared:

"Alberta in talks with Nestlé to privatize water." The article quoted Letmathe-Brabeck as telling Reuters that he was "actively dealing with the government of Alberta to think about a water exchange." The Edmonton Journal reported that Brabeck had stated that Alberta is a good place to consider the concept, in part because there is expected to be increasing competition for water between agricultural producers and the petroleum sector. In other words, a plan is afoot for Alberta's water to be commodified and traded away for some Nestlé product such as cocoa beans. The assault on the right to water is also being launched as part of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations which Canada is conducting with the European Union. Europe's private water monopolies are pushing for the inclusion of drinking water and wastewater services and the EU negotiators are also asking that Canada's municipalities and their water utilities be included in a chapter on public procurement.

The Council of Canadians points out: "The reality is that Nestlé is one of the biggest global voices pushing for the privatization and commodification of water worldwide, is the largest player in the bottled water industry and is depleting aquifers in communities throughout North America to bottle and sell, is the target of global boycotts for its marketing of breast milk substitutes in violation of international standards, has a long list of labour violations in countries all over the world, and is currently involved in a court case in which Nestlé has admitted it hired agents to spy on the French activist group ATTAC."

The university has a social responsibility to serve the public good. This award shows that instead of upholding this responsibility, the public good is being equated with what serves the monopolies and not the people. This is why the conferring of honorary degrees is kept under such tight control. There is a fraudulent process of calling for open nominations which are then reviewed by a small, select 20-member University Senate Committee that makes the final choices in secret, with no appeal process available to overturn selections. This nomination and others like it shows the need to put the whole process under public control. First, the community should definitely put people forward as nominees. Second, the full background of all nominees should be made public to everyone for a period of time so that the candidates can be discussed. Third, the final decisions to confer such degrees should be made through a university-wide referendum.

Send a message to University of Alberta President Indira Samarasekera and Chancellor Linda Hughes telling them that Peter Brabeck-Letmathe and Nestlé do not deserve the University's highest honour. (Sample letter at: http://canadians.org/action/2012/nestle.html). Join the rally on March 1 to protest the unacceptable awarding of Brabeck-Letmathe's degree.

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