Health Care
workers have
had enough!
We are the tens of thousands of OPSEU/SEFPO members working on the front-lines of health care.
We are standing together to make sure everybody gets the care they need.
Join us!
Tell the Ford government to Keep Health Care Public.
Email them now!
When you press the yellow “Tell Ford now: Keep it public!” button, we’ll send the following email on your behalf to Premier Doug Ford, Health and Long Term Care Minister Sylvia Jones, and Labour Minister Monte McNaughton.
Dear Premier and Ministers:
I am a public health care worker and I am writing to ask you, as my local representative, to stop the sell-off of public health care services to private, for-profit companies.
Ontario’s healthcare system is in crisis because of extreme short-staffing and underfunding. Privatization will make this crisis worse, by pulling more staff away from the public system, and increasing out-of-pockets costs for patients. Yet Ontario’s Conservative government continues to push forward legislation to expand healthcare privatization.
Bill 124 froze the wages of health care workers, resulting in massive recruitment and retention issues.
Underfunding public health care disproportionately impacts women workers, including racialized women who are the lowest paid and most precariously employed, during a cost-of-living crisis.
The government failed to spend nearly $2 billion that was earmarked for health care during the pandemic, and then pointed to the underfunded, understaffed public health care system as the problem.
Health care workers know what we need to fix this crisis:
- Negotiate with health care workers, instead of fighting us in court to stifle our wages, and ensure decent working conditions.
- Improve recruitment and retention by providing incentives to the current workforce and invest in training to attract new workers.
- Stop privatization and invest in the public health care system.
- Safeguard our public services by giving workers the respect they deserve.
These are the real solutions to reducing wait times for health care services and improving access to health care for all Ontarians.
As a member of your riding, I am urging you to represent my interests and the interests of all public health care workers in your community. Take these solutions to Queen’s Park and fight to protect public health care.
Your name here
A Manufactured Crisis
The Ford government has manufactured this crisis. They have stifled healthcare workers’ pay with Bill 124 – capping wage increases to 1% at a time when cost of living is the worst it’s ever been.
The government has failed to spend nearly $2 billion of money that was specifically earmarked for healthcare during the pandemic. Now, they claim that ‘the status quo isn’t working’ and privatization is the only solution.
We have had enough.
Key demands
Fair wages for healthcare workers.
- Legislated wage cuts (Bill 124) and poor working conditions are at the heart of the healthcare crisis. Healthcare workers have been overworked and undervalued. We face burnout and mental health injury, and this has caused a retention and recruitment crisis. It’s time to make health care a profession that people want to enter.
- Stop government interference into the fair collective bargaining process – collective agreements must respected; not overridden by the government at their whim.
- Focus on negotiating with frontline workers, not fighting us in court to stifle our wages. If you expect workers to show up, pay up!
Improve Recruitment and Retention.
- Provide responsive incentives to the current workforce to keep them from leaving their professions and invest in training/education to attract new workers. For so many, tuition is simply not affordable, especially in this cost of living crisis.
- Invest in providing well-paying healthcare jobs for healthcare workers directly; not investing in staffing agencies that pull money out of our public system and into inflated private profits.
Keep Health Care Public and stop the sell-off.
- Our public healthcare system is strong, but it requires funding and staffing to meet the demand for care; our province has the resources to make that happen. Ontario competes for last place out of all provinces when it comes to funding for healthcare. We can do better.
- b. Access to strong public healthcare is a great equalizer in our society. Stop privatization and invest all new funding in public healthcare for all.
