As the strike by 3,000 care co-ordinators enters its second week, understanding the strike’s impact on Ontario’s health care system isn’t an easy process.
The workers – Ontario Nurses’ Association members and employees of nine Community Care Access Centres, including 250 from the Waterloo-Wellington CCAC – walked off the job last week, after working 10 months without a contract.
Thursday, striking workers picketed outside St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener.
“We want to get back to the table, we want to negotiate a fair contract and we want to get back to work,” Heather Roberts told CTV News.
Dale Clement, chief executive officer of the Waterloo-Wellington CCAC, said her organization also wants to get back to bargaining.
“We’re really looking to see where they want to go and (if they’re) willing to come back,” she said.
While the loss of 260 care workers has forced the CCAC to turn to its contingency plan, Clement said there had yet to be any major effects on its workload.
“I won’t say that it’s a piece of cake … but our priority is our patients,” she said.
“We’re working really hard to make sure that those patients are looked after at this time.”
Caressant Care operates 15 long-term care homes across the province, including four in Waterloo-Wellington.
Communications manager Lee Griffi told CTV News he is “very concerned” by the impacts his organization has already felt from the strike – including only one new application being processed, and no family tours taking place since the strike began.
Additionally, he said he was told that homes may not get full behavioural assessments, which diagnose conditions such as aggressive dementia.
“It will take longer to have assessments done, and the assessments that we get will likely be incomplete,”
Clement said those assessments continue to take place.
