Imagine your child breaks their arm. It’s early in the evening, just before dinner, as they rush inside from playing with their friends to show you their forelimb, bruised and limp and with a face flooded in tears.
You rush them to the hospital and you wait. You wait. Then you wait even longer.
Your child’s broken arm is serious, of course, but it not as serious as the man who can barely breathe, nor the woman who can barely move. You know why you need to wait, but the wait is much longer than it should be.
The wait is too long because the government refuses to properly fund Alberta’s public health care system.
But what if we told you that the wait was even longer because staff had to rush around the hospital in a desperate search to find clean bedsheets?
Hospital laundry privatization is a disaster. It’s a complete failure, and yet the government has a plan to do the same thing with other key health care services.”
That is the reality facing Alberta’s health care workers and patients. That is the reality since the provincial government handed over all hospital laundry services to a for-profit private company called K-Bro.
“Hospital laundry privatization is a disaster,” says Curtis Jackson, AUPE Vice-President and Chair of the union’s Anti-Privatization Committee. “It’s a complete failure, and yet the government has a plan to do the same thing with other key health care services.”
Don’t believe us? You should hear the horror stories hospital workers have to tell.
Soiled linens that were supposed to be clean, filled with fluids and stained by who-knows-what. Sheets hiding surprise needles and lost personal items like car keys and even false teeth.
"If you go to the hospital, the last thing you should be worried about is clean bedsheets."
Remember those AUPE members rushing behind the scenes—the ones searching for fresh linens so you can finally stop waiting in the emergency room? Sometimes they are forced to ‘borrow’ from other units because of shortages and restrictions caused by K-Bro.
This is the new normal thanks to the government’s bad decisions.
“Some of the images I see are truly disgusting,” says Jackson. “If you go to the hospital, the last thing you should be worried about is clean bedsheets. The focus should be on quality care. Yet here we are with our health and safety at risk because of privatization.”
The Alberta government’s decision to privatize all laundry services severely impacted staff and patients across the province, especially in rural areas. In 2022, approximately 400 AUPE members in over 54 communities lost their jobs.
"The quality of health care and other public services suffer when the government gives them away to the private sector."
This is what privatization does. It harms our communities, takes our jobs, and hands over vital services to greedy corporations who cut corners and mistreat their staff so they can make lots of money.
That is why the Anti-Privatization Committee is launching a new campaign: Keep it Clean!
The Keep it Clean campaign will begin in April, after the Committee finishes its investigation. Once complete, the Committee will host a press conference at AUPE Headquarters to show the media and all Albertans just how bad things are.
“The quality of health care and other public services suffer when the government gives them away to the private sector,” says Jackson. “We must stand up for our public health care system, not to mention the AUPE members who provide these important services.
“We encourage all AUPE members to join us—tell the government to Keep it Clean!”
