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TORONTO – During a news conference on Monday, July 16, at 9:30 a.m., the Presidents of OPSEU and Unifor will jointly call on Premier Ford to ensure that fee increases he negotiates with Ontario doctors help improve the low pay and terrible working conditions faced by front-line workers in many community health clinics.
“Good doctors deserve respect. But some doctors are bad bosses,” said OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas. “I think Ontarians will be shocked to learn that doctors in Owen Sound are spending a fortune on high-priced lawyers, injunctions, and private security instead of spending a little to give their workers decent pay and working conditions.”
Ontario doctors have been demanding a fee increase of 15 per cent by 2021. However, at the Owen Sound Family Health Organization and the Port Arthur Health Centre in Thunder Bay, front-line workers have been on strike for weeks because the doctors who own the clinics refuse to pay them fairly.
“You have doctor owners making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year who refuse to pay a living wage to the workers that look after their patients and keep their for-profit health care clinics running,” said Unifor National President Jerry Dias. “The Ontario government must make sure that any future fee increase won’t further balloon profits and enrich doctors while health care workers in the private sector remain grossly underpaid.”
Thomas and Dias will be joined at Monday’s news conference by striking workers from the Owen Sound Family Health Organization and the Port Arthur Health Centre.
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For more information:
OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas, 613-329-1931
Unifor National President Jerry Dias, contact Communications Representative Kathleen O’Keefe 416-896-3303
