FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 18, 1998
Government must act to prevent hospital shut down
EDMONTON -- Albertans would not be faced with the possibility of a city-wide hospital strike in Edmonton if the Klein government was providing adequate financial support for health care, says Audrey Cormack, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. "The root of the problem is chronic under-funding," says Cormack. "Under-funding is what's behind the current bed shortage. It's what's behind the problem of growing waiting lists. And it's what has forced workers at Edmonton-area hospitals into the position of considering a strike." In a letter sent to Premier Ralph Klein today, Cormack urged the Premier to immediately dip into the government's record-breaking $2.7 billion surplus to increase funding for health care. "Simply put, the Capital Health Authority does not currently have the financial resources to cover the costs of basic patient care," wrote Cormack. "And they don't have the resources to meet the most basic needs of health care workers. Underfunding is forcing the CHA to balk at reasonable demands for wage increases and job security. It is also forcing them to make plans for farming out important services to low-wage, low-quality contractors -- something that is definitely not in the public interest." Cormack says that without a substantial injection of cash from the provincial government, a major conflict in the health care sector is "almost inevitable." If this kind of conflict occurs, Cormack said "it will be the direct consequence of the government's underfunding of health care." Cormack also wrote a letter to the Capital Health Authority and the Caritas Health Group urging them to sign a fair deal with hospital workers -- a deal that provides for fair wage increases and guarantees that health care jobs will not be contracted-out to the private sector. She said that instead of trying to force concessions on their employees, the health boards should be fighting the provincial government for increased funding. "If (the hospital workers) go on strike, they'll be doing the job that you should have been doing all along," wrote Cormack in her letter to the CHA. "They will be standing up and fighting for an adequately-funded public health care system."
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