In an editorial, The Peterborough Examiner writes that citizens are rightly concerned that the management of their local hospital is targeting a group of female clerical workers with a unilateral wage freeze.
“People feel connected to their hospital,” writes The Examiner. “They want to know that if they need medical care the complex organism that big hospitals have become will have contented staff and run smoothly.”
The editorial goes on to praise OPSEU for doing “a very good job over the years of getting good contracts for its members.”
The paper also points out that the hospital CEO has been enjoying pay hikes over the past three years, which “took him to a 2017 salary of $380,000, with a $20,000 ‘retirement allowance’ and $12,000 in taxable benefits.”
OPSEU is right to publicize the growing gap between what it pays its executive and its clerical workers, says the paper.
“While this sort of wage battle would normally remain between the employer, the workers and their union, in the case of PRHC local taxpayers are both interested and invested.”