By Kevin Barry, Vice-President of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees
Welcome to Alberta’s boneyard! No, I’m not talking about the dino park in Drumheller. I’m talking about the latest experiment in private healthcare that’s caught the eyes of the UCP: a proposal for a $200-million private surgical facility, specializing in musculoskeletal procedures.
CBC broke the news about the project yesterday morning (Aug. 11), and though the clinic is still in its proposal phase, the brains behind the big business – a handful of orthopedic surgeons and a developer, who have secured the support of a high-powered lobby group – say Health Minister Shandro likes what he sees.
If it’s approved and the government signs a contract with the group, the clinic will be built right next to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in the heart of downtown Edmonton. According to CBC, it’ll be the province’s largest private, contracted surgical project ever.
The tentative plan is to send non-emergency surgeries to the moneymakers and let doctors in the public hospitals shoulder the costliest and most difficult procedures. In other words, it fits neatly into the UCP agenda to bleed the public healthcare system and funnel public funds into the private system.
In theory, the orthopedic clinic would be the start of Premier Kenney’s big healthcare hemorrhage. Heck, it could even be a step toward a two-tiered system, where the rich bill Albertans for procedures that are normally free-of-charge and wealthier clients can jump the queue.
In practice, however… the project is a bone-rattling bad joke.
Not because it’s funny – the punchline is punishing. The project demonstrates that the Health Minister assumes the Albertans he has betrayed, over and over, will staff his newest pet project and get it off the ground, without union protection!
The proposal also presupposes that Kenney and his cronies expect doctors to support it, even after he ran them out of the province, tearing up their contracts and making Alberta one of the least attractive places to practice. But Kenney actually expects the nursing care and general support services (GSS) workers at Alberta’s hospitals to seek employment at the clinic – after ordering Alberta Health Services (AHS) to axe more than 2,000 of their jobs!
There’s no other way to say it: If the UCP approves this project, it will prove the Premier thinks he can steal our livelihoods and force Albertans to buy them back from him.
AUPE members are far too familiar with the price of privatization to fall for this, though. They’ve prioritized protecting jobs and stopping privatization in their contract negotiations. As I write this, workers are talking to each other about how they will protect healthcare if the government won’t. Strike action is on the table.
Our public-sector GSS members know, for instance, that if the UCP contract-out hospital housekeeping, food services and laundry to private, for-profit businesses – like Shandro said he would – they will lose their seniority, and most likely their benefits, pensions, union protections and hard-earned wages. Think it can’t happen? It already did in BC. Between 2003 and 2004, the province contracted out thousands of similar support services jobs, and workers saw their wages slashed nearly in half, from almost $20/hour to $10.50/hour.
Similarly, public-sector nursing care members know that fewer jobs will likely be available for them if the UCP succeeds in remaking Alberta in Kenney’s image, especially in continuing care. According to one benchmark study, Alberta’s private continuing-care homes are so short-staffed, every resident, on average, receives nearly an hour less of direct patient care than in the public system.
And none of us, especially those who were union members in 2004, can forget the fate of the first private, for-profit orthopedic surgery the provincial government awarded a contract, when it first sold out surgeries to corporate Alberta.
Not only was the Health Resource Centre (HRC) in Calgary accused of costing the province more per surgery, but it cost Albertans millions more when it had to be bailed out by the province because it signed a lease on a building that extended far beyond its contract with AHS. Today’s orthopedic proposal is even bigger, which means the failure will be colossal.
AUPE’s AHS members have no intention of reanimating the private profit-monster of the past. They’re fiercely defending their jobs, and by refusing to budge, are standing up for the high-quality public services they provide.
There’s no way these dedicated, heroic workers are going to dig their own grave just because the Premier orders it to benefit his rich buddies. A private orthopedic clinic on the other hand, will dig its own grave – whether workers are there to see its demise or not.
Our medical advice to the UCP? Recognize your malpractice today, so Albertans don’t have to suffer your hospital tragedy tomorrow.
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