OPSEU Local 505 has filed a complaint with the Ontario Labour Board arguing discrimination, intimidation and targeting of union activists at Ornge.
The union believes that Ornge failed to train two elected union officers in order to eliminate their positions and avoid following the reverse seniority language in the Collective Agreement. Union Officers have also been denied pay when they attend discipline meetings and have been denied time off to attend Union educational training.
There have been at least eight grieved terminations at Ornge in the past year out of a membership of 75 workers.
Staff at the Ornge Communications Centre feel intimidated and fearful for their jobs. They are also concerned that further layoffs will affect their ability to provide adequate services to the public.
According to their website, Ornge prides itself on its core values, one of which is compassion. However, it fails to meet its own ideals. If Ornge only “demonstrated identification with both patient care and service, and with colleagues and fellow workers for their personal and professional lives, throughout all levels of the organization” staff would be able to do their jobs effectively without constant fear of arbitrary reprisals.
Ornge boasts of its world-class Academy of Transport Medicine, claiming that that their workers are “among the most highly trained and skilled in the world. However, Ornge is laying off staff who they say have not been fully trained.
Ornge is a private not-for-profit charitable organization that primarily coordinates medical air transport and transfer of patients between medical facilities. It has been in business under the name of Ornge since 2005 but has been operating in various capacities since 1977.
The program was formerly under the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care but was divested to Ornge.