Layoffs hit rest home

Layoffs hit rest home
Funding shortfall forces Normanna to layoff 38 employees
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby Now assistant editor
Published Feb. 16, 2003

A total of 38 full- and part-time dietary and housekeeping workers were given layoff notices by the Normanna Rest Home this week, setting the stage for what the Hospital Employees Union believes could be the next round of contracting out of health-care services in the Lower Mainland.
Margaret Douglas-Matthews, executive director of the 100-bed seniors' care facility in south Burnaby, said the decision to contract out the non-nursing work effective April 1 was spurred by a looming 30 per cent funding shortfall - about $400,000 - and the society's inability to pay union contract pay increases.
"Even though we restructured last year and introduced chargeable extras, we can't afford this," Douglas-Matthews said Thursday.
"Residential care is something we won't compromise. It is a very difficult decision and the board of directors has ratified that. We have chosen to provide quality care and balance the budget."
Margie Blamey, spokesperson for the Hospital Employees Union, said the layoffs appear to be part of a province-wide strategy to cut wages for ancillary service staff, some of whom who have worked at Normanna or other long-term care facilities for up to 20 years.
"This is simply not fair to the workers and it's not fair to the residents," said Blamey, who repeated her contention that HEU members do far more than simple cleaning and cooking inside health- care facilities. "The part that is really key to long-term care is that these employees have social and professional relationships with these patients and their families. It's not just the direct care workers who do this, it's everybody in the facility. This is a real blow to both the residents and the families."
Blamey said employees of long-term care facilities often have a special bond with their patients, and that was shown when the Dogwood Lodge was closed down four years ago and both staff and patients were moved into the newly rebuilt Normanna.
This week, many of those relocated staff people were among the 38 staffers handed layoff notices, Blamey said. Similar layoffs were also announced this week at the Pleasantview Care Home in Mission, plus another long-term care facility in the Point Grey area of Vancouver. Blamey said she is expecting similar layoff announcements at other long-term care facilities in the city, such as the Dania Home and Swedish Canadian rest home, both of which use unionized housekeeping and cooking staff. She said the decision to contract out the work will result in a lower quality of care at Normanna, and a greater risk of infections and other problems at any facility that lays off its unionized staff.
"It's a devaluation of work," she said. "I can't speak to what their motives are, but it's certainly not for resident care."
Blamey also took aim at those sections of the recent Romanow report on health care that opened the doors to the privatization of non-medical work in health-care facilities.
"Other jurisdictions can testify to the fact that there is no cost saving or efficiency when you bring in a private work force," she said. "In fact, especially in housekeeping and infection control, standards are key to maintaining the safety of seniors' residences."
While the union has known about pending budget cuts for well over a year, Douglas-Matthew's statement that Normanna is facing a $400,000 shortfall marks the first time that a long-term care provider has put an actual dollar figure on the cutback, Blamey said.
David Plug, a spokesperson for the FHA, said Normanna's budget for next year has not been finalized, but the facility will likely receive the same funding as last year - approximately $4.5 million.
When asked where the $400,000 funding shortfall comes from, Plug said: "That's an inflationary cost pressure which the health authority and all service providers are facing."
Last year, in an attempt to keep up with the rising costs of providing care, Normanna raised the costs on a long list of what used to be free services to its patients, such as in-room cablevision, walker rentals, laundry marking, trust account maintenance fees and a new monthly activity fee. Meanwhile, Douglas- Matthews also confirmed that similar layoffs may be announced next week by Dania Home in central Burnaby - another long-term care facility that has its own board of directors but shares its senior staff with Normanna.