MichaelHurleyCUPE
@HurleyOCHUCUPE
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Michael Hurley is president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, First Vice-president of CUPE Ontario and a member of CUPE's National Executive Board.
Joined March 2021
S. is a cleaner who, pregnant, was asked to clean the ICU room of a patient with Covid. This airborne virus is dangerous for mother & foetus. She asked for a $1.79 N95 mask & was refused. The MOL backed that refusal. Wouldn’t you feel that no one cared for you or your baby?
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Hospitals are protected by noise by-laws. Police have the power to stop the honking that disturbs the final hours of patients who are dying, patients who are trying to recuperate and the concentration of staff. Ticketing and towing for those in defiance needs to start happening.
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Vietnam has a minimum of 30 paid sick days and does not allow workers with Covid-19 to work and infect others. Vietnam's 91,000,000 population has lost 35 to Covid-19 while Ontario's 15,000,000 population has squandered 8,039. Vietnam also accepts the science on transmission.
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In 2020, 250 health care workers demonstrating at MPP Lisa MacLeod's office were given 5 minutes to leave by Ottawa police. 5 days into the Convoy protest the Chief says police will negotiate with the demonstrators about leaving?.
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1,350 on hallway stretchers, 250,000 on surgery wait lists, only 3,000 new hospital beds planned of 16,000 needed, frequent ER closures, funding less this year than last. Isn’t alcohol in convenience stores just pixie dust to distract us from our deteriorating hospital system?
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Blaming the public for crowded hospitals when we have the fewest beds and staff in the OECD and spend less than any province takes real chutzpah. Premier Ford can imagine spending $200 billion on a tunnel to nowhere but not the $2 billion a year that would end hallway healthcare.
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From Queen's Park Today: 'Toronto Police report that around Safe Injection Sites, robberies in these neighbourhoods dropped by 40 per cent, break and enters were down 13 per cent, bike thefts fell 16 per cent, and shootings decreased by a whopping 57 per cent.".
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"After 30 years in politics", Premier Ford is well aware of real and perceived conflicts of interest. There should be an independent investigation.
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Private clinics will get 33% more than hospitals for a surgery but won’t take complex medical cases. Hospitals will be left with expensive cases, no economy of scale & 33% less for performing a more complex surgery. Are you sure the Ford government supports the public system?
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“Loblaw’s profit in the quarter “is just one more piece of evidence that suggests one of the major drivers of inflation is corporations raising prices.” . Critics accuse Loblaws of profiting from inflation as profits surge by 40% via @torontostar.
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Odd that the arsenal of police resources (riot squads, dogs, tear gas, water cannon, thousands of officers) and tactics (kettling, intimidation) so often deployed in other protests with haste & cruelty have yet even to be hinted at in Ottawa, a city held hostage for 10 days.
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The ER at St. Mary's Hospital will be closed overnight til Friday due to a staffing shortage. This is just one of several hospital ERs closing temporarily for this reason. The Ford government won't keep nursing and other HCWs by cutting their salaries and not protecting them.
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The NDP introduces a bill today to phase out for-profit nursing agencies in Ontario. We spent $9.2 billion in 10 years on for-profit staffing agencies. Quebec will phase out these agencies in 2026. Increase nurses' wages and hire more of them instead.
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Premier Ford says people with a severe sore throat should see their doctor and not use an ER. Many people don't have a doctor or can't wait for weeks to see one when they are acutely ill. Strep, for example, can be deadly. They should head to the ER. He needs to add staff to.
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Premier Ford: "If there was 5,000 nurses that could fly from the sky, we'd be hiring them tomorrow." .15,000 Ontario nurses are licensed but not working- some of whom can be recruited to work in hospitals with incentives. Hire away, Mr. Ford.
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Premier Ford when asked about overcrowding in hospitals “We’re throwing everything we can at the healthcare system“. His April budget cuts hospital budgets by $120m and HC is underspent in 2022 by over $800m. His government is slashing spending.
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As the 7th wave hits, the skeleton staff of exhausted health care workers is so vulnerable to the virus. Any significant infection of the current workforce will dramatically impact services. The reluctance to provide them with a $2.00 N95 mask, when needed, is incomprehensible.
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Perhaps before the Ford government scraps $1 billion in license sticker renewal revenue it could lay out its full fiscal plan & show, among other things, how it will fund the huge expansion of staffing in LTC it promised over the graves of 4000 dead residents.
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Dr. Theresa Tam: “the period of communicability” for Omicron is “no shorter than the other variants.” Ontario must reconsider its shortened isolation period, for which there is no scientific basis.
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If for-profit surgical centres mean user fees, higher costs, higher death rates and bleed scarce staff from public hospitals, why encourage them? Because here are billions to be made for some by opening this market. Time for Ontarians to stand up for publicly delivered care.
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Vacations are not driving the ER crisis. It's the huge number of unfilled jobs. It's the thousands of people sick with Covid they caught at work. It's an exodus in the face of impossible workloads and real wage cuts. And a government planning 5 years of cuts, offering no hope.
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During the last election, Premier Ford denied he would privatize hospital surgeries. Not only has he no mandate, he misled the electorate. The PC’s wouldn't have a majority had they championed for-profit health care.They should call an election.
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750 positions will be cut at Unity Health Toronto due to provincial underfunding. Hospitals have a combined $800 million in deficits and are cutting staff and services across Ontario. So much for ending hallway medicine.
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1,000 of 1,800 Chelsey Ontario’s residents turned up for a public meeting about their hospital, whose ER is now closed from Oct. 7-Dec. 2. In the Tory heartland there is deep concern about the ongoing hospital cuts & the Ford government's lazy approach to the staffing crisis.
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College of physicians & surgeons, which has oversight of private clinics: “We shared that this wasn’t the solution to the health-care crisis & would further tax health human resources shortages & further increase wait times for more urgent hospital-based care.” Advice ignored.
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A nurse notes that while her unit worked 4,800 hours short last year, her manager's salary is up 10% while hers is cut by the same amount in real terms, a huge insult in addition to a crushing workload.
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Frontline hospital staff represented by CUPE: 50,000. Number of meetings with the Ford government about the hospital staffing crisis: none. Letters responded to by the Minister of Health: none. Number of Ontarians adversely affected by ER, ICU, OR and other closures: millions.
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The Ford government slashes hospital budgets as it funds for-profit surgical centres. User fees, higher costs, increased death rates & loss of hospital staff won’t impede Mr. Ford’s commitment to monetize surgeries. Fierce resistance from hospital staff & Ontarians will be needed
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In the last 3 weeks, 3,082 Ontario HCWs have contracted Covid at work- one of the highest rates of the pandemic. We are deluding ourselves if we think that there will not be an explosion of cases when restrictions are dropped.
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The Ford government moves 5,000 cataracts to Herzing from the Ottawa Hospital without a tendering process and pays 1/3 more for the same procedure. Surely it isn't true that Herzing is a donor to the PC party of Ontario?
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Covid hospitalizations in Ontario are up 14% over the last week. If this escalation continues, between staff Covid illnesses, attrition, reduced capacity & the new variants, hospitals will not, on their own, be able to hold the line. Public health measures must be considered.
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How can ending the minimum price for alcohol be a priority for the government, when a grandfather died in an ER after waiting for 11 hours this week? Premier Ford won't fund the hospitals to meet demand and chides us for abusing ERs at a tour stop in SSM.
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Ontario’s hospitals have the fewest staff & beds in the developed world swamped by a growing, aging population. HCWs, exhausted, fall ill & many leave. Resources to increase staffing & beds, reduce workloads & increase salaries to encourage retention are urgently needed.
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Premier Ford reiterates his promise to build a 50 kilometre tunnel under the 401 - a fantastically expensive project. Meanwhile, Ontario won't let Bracebridge, Minden and Thessalon keep their community hospitals? The kids are hungry and dad's brought home a case of beer.
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In the last month 1,456 Ontario health care workers have caught Covid at work. 22 months into the pandemic and they still cannot get a $1.79 N95 mask to defend against the virus. 1/3 of these staff won't be paid for their time off sick. This is why people are leaving.
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Well, here we have it. TorStar: "Poilievre added that a Conservative government would cut spending & reduce the deficit to help bring down inflation so that higher interest rates are no longer necessary". Our health care system won't survive another round of Tory austerity.
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“I am an experienced RPN earning $31 an hour. Our hospital pays agency RPNs $38.00-$43.00 an hour. How can they pay this much for outside staff and not long-standing staff? My morale is low, and I am thinking about leaving. What can we do about this?” We can repeal Bill 124.
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Despite the evidence that privately delivered surgeries have higher death rates, worse outcomes, higher costs and bleed staff away from the public system, the Ford government has introduced legislation today. Our job now is to battle like never before for the public system.
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Hospitalized elderly patients today lost their rights to consent to treatment, to privacy of medical information & to appeal.They can be forced to transfer 300km. The main beneficiaries of Bill 7 are for-profit LTC homes whose beds no one wants due to horrific Covid death rates
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Quebec has banned nursing agencies. Ontario will require nursing agencies to provide some information (not their profits). Quebec sees that nursing agencies will steal staff and saddle the hc system with unbearable costs. Scrap our bill and follow Quebec's lead.
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The government says the hospital staffing crisis is happening across the country. True, but Ontario has the fewest staff of any province and has for many years. The workloads are heavier here, the demoralization is worse here & this government, after 4 years has 20,000 vacancies.
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Funding for LTC is down $26m in the Ontario budget. 38,000 are on wait lists for beds but LTC Capital Development is down $376m. How does the Ford government add tens of thousands of staff and beds while cutting LTC budgets?.It can't, & it looks like Mr. Ford never planned to.
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22,246 Ontario health care workers have caught Covid-19 at work. 24 have died. Triple the infections from Oct. and twice the deaths. Refused adequate protections. 1/3 unpaid after catching Covid at work. 40% of nurses consider leaving. They have your backs, but no one has theirs.
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How can we prioritize a $100+ billion tunnel over the $30 billion it would cost to clear the wait lists for surgeries and LTC, get patients off stretchers & into beds, staff up hospitals and LTC and provide adequate homecare?
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" There was no actual investigation into the matter, no fact-finding, no search for narratives other than the premier’s. In short, Mr. Ford said he didn’t do anything wrong, and the integrity commissioner said, “Okay.”.
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The tragic hallway toddler death at Lakeridge hospital didn’t have to happen like that. The critical lack of beds and staff deny too many patients dignity in their final moments. The ongoing failure of the Ford government to address the staffing crisis is unforgiveable.
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Death rates in private hospitals and private clinics are higher than in public hospitals, outcomes are less successful, costs are higher & private facilities bleed away precious staff. The PM needs to come down solidly on the side of not-for-profit delivery of hospital services.
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I remember the thousands who died of dehydration and neglect in for-profit care during Covid and the thousands who have died waiting for surgeries. All the empty promises. Premier Ford should have some humility.
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Washington Post: “The Groundwork Collaborative found that the largest 24 oil & gas companies recorded $174 billion in profits last year — the highest increase in seven years.” Price gouging & profiteering, not consumer borrowing should be the target for inflation reduction.
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An 11% increase in measles cases in Ontario in a week - 1,622 cases now. The Medical Officer of Health is failing Ontarians.
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RNs offered $750 per day to work with Academic Orthopedic Surgical Associates Saturdays & clerical staff $600 per day. The private clinic is paying hospital staff twice their rate, something the Ford government denied would happen. Scrap private clinics.
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Minden Hospital ER and all in-patient services will close June 1. The province has hundreds of millions for unnecessary private surgical centres and yet is choking the life out of rural, remote and small town hospitals. This decision must be reversed.
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Peterborough hospital staff return letters PC MPP Dave Smith sent thanking them for their Covid service. Real wage cuts for health care workers are the actual thanks from PC MPPs and the insincerity of the ‘thank you’ letters from Mr. Smith was just too much to accept.
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Doug Ford cancelled his visit to the Sault today as 1/10 of the population of Thessalon , 90 km away, protested about the closure of their hospital. Minden, Wingham, Carleton Place, Clinton, Chesley. rural Ontario is reeling from ER closures under this government.
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The Minister met with a private hospital & attended a Chamber of Commerce meeting on health care privatization, but has no time to respond to or meet with representatives of 290,000 health care staff to hear concerns about the hospital crisis & how privatization will worsen it.
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Wingham, St. Mary’s, Clinton, Seaforth, Chesley– ER doors are locking shut across rural southwestern Ontario. The Ford government is on track to underspend its health budget by over $2b in 2022 – enough to solve the staffing crisis. It is making these cuts, deliberately.
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How often could you visit your mom if she was forced into a LTC facility 300 km away? What would sustain her in a community without friends or family? Our government may have no empathy for the most vulnerable but the rest of us must do everything we can to have Bill 7 withdrawn
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Since Mar. 1, 1,600 HCWs have contracted Covid at work. This is one of the highest readings of the pandemic. Absent public testing, on what basis does the Chief Medical Officer of Health believe it is safe to drop pandemic precautions?
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Spending least on health care of any province, the Ford government has a surplus! A surplus of people waiting for care, hundreds of frail octogenarians forced into for-profit LTC and an exhausted workforce in exodus. It’s time to push back, hard.
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Ontario's Auditor General should ask why the Ministry of Health pays private surgical clinics 3x as much per eye as it pays public hospitals and why our wait times for cataract surgery have lengthened since the province began to encourage private surgeries.
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The Ford government promised to end hallway medicine. It promised to fix the hospital staffing crisis. In fact, it is cutting hospital budgets - by $116 m this year and by much more over the next 5 years. This is a man-made crisis, fueled by cuts and cloaked in falsehoods.
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The Ford government lost 4,000 residents in for-profit LTC, a death rate 4x higher than municipal LTC homes. It now panders private hospitals & clinics despite strong evidence of much higher death rates and costs. This isn't their health care system to sell.
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This week 1,281 HCWs contracted Covid at work- one of the highest soundings during the pandemic. Wastewater readings are exploding. Hospital outbreaks are up 20%. 84 LTC homes are in outbreak. Pretending everything is fine to seek advantage in the Ontario election is scandalous.
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A huge difference between then Solicitor General Sylvia Jones’ claim that 1,500 OPP officers were in Ottawa during the Freedom Convey, when that was the number of cumulative shifts. This tendency to overstate the government’s contributions continues at the Ministry of Health.
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1,383 confirmed or probable cases of measles in Ontario now, up from 567 a month ago. A 240% increase. While this government hallucinates about a tunnel under the 401, we have a serious outbreak that it has done nothing to contain.
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The Ford government says “our intention is to appeal” the court decision overturning Bill 124. Making health care & other public sector workers crawl through broken glass for years while this wends its way through the courts is just punitive. There should be no appeal.
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Thank you to the thousands of hydro workers who worked through this storm to restore power.
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Ontario hospitals ran up 6 million agency nursing hours, paying premiums of 2x & more the regular hourly rate in 2020-21– the equivalent cost of 7,000 full-time nursing positions. Decades of hospital management exploiting nurses & treating them as disposable brought us to this.
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“The evidence shows that privatization just doesn’t work. Indeed, it usually makes matters worse.”. Ontario should ditch any plans to further privatize health care. It just doesn’t work — and usually makes matters worse via @torontostar.
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If you thought the last thing your mom saw before dying of dehydration, lying in soiled sheets, were caregivers wearing garbage bags & reused ppe, while the owners took millions for executives & shareholders, would you support a 30-year renewal for Orchard Villa? Protest tomorrow
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Ford won't say “In private hospitals, more of you will die.” But analysis of 26,000 hospitals & 38 million patients found a higher risk of death in private hospitals . Doug Ford’s government is quietly privatizing health care via @torontostar.
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What is the point of truth and reconciliation if Ontario can ignore the sovereignty of its indigenous peoples and develop their territories without consent? .
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2,500,000 without a family doctor.250,000 waiting for surgery.50,000 waiting for LTC.3,500 LTC beds built of 15,000 promised.1,850 on stretchers in hospital hallways.1 $100 billion tunnel to distract us from all of this
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The N95 mask is very effective at blocking Covid virus particles. Demand is exploding for them for schools & elsewhere. The Ford government's refusal to use emergency powers to order GM to mass produce N95 masks in Oshawa was a strategic failure that leaves us more vulnerable now
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2,000 in hallways on stretchers. Hundreds of thousands waiting for surgeries. Hospitals have a combined $2 billion deficit. He's on bike lanes. From the Globe and Mail: Doug Ford needs a reminder that he’s premier of Ontario not mayor of Toronto
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Chartwell shareholders re-elected Mike Harris by 86% despite losing 4.6 residents per 100 beds vs. 2.8 for non-profit homes. Millions went to Chartwell shareholders and executives as residents died in understaffed facilities. We can't afford the human cost of for-profit LTC.
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Wingham closed its ER overnight, joining over 100 recent hospital ER closures. Perhaps Premier Ford can explain to the residents of this farming community how slashing hospital spending is helping its hospital to retain staff in the face of unprecedented challenges?
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Minister Elliot, asked about delayed hospital procedures says the Ford government is “Making sure we can let independent health facilities operate private hospitals.” After the carnage of for-profit LTC, suggesting private hospitals is just ideological and dangerous.
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Ontario PCs would not have won a majority if they had championed privatizing hospital surgeries and diagnostics during the provincial election. When hospital privatization was raised in the spring, the PCs denied any plans. The Ford government has no mandate for this policy.
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The evidence is clear - safe injection sites saved 7,400 lives last year. 1,600 died by suicide and 411 in highway accidents. The health care system must make decisions based on evidence. This is pandering to the PC base at the expense of people struggling with addiction.
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Why don’t we campaign for a criminal prosecution of the executives of the for-profit long term care chains who plundered their facilities during the pandemic for dividends for their shareholders and bonuses for themselves while thousands in their care perished?
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Mr. Ford says privatization never came up in health accord talks. Over 4,000 Ontario seniors died alone, in filth and squalor in for-profit LTC; the army had to be sent in and we led the OECD in Covid resident deaths. Change was promised. Not worth a mention?
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Campbellford Memorial Hospital ER to be closed over Christmas Eve due to staff shortages. It's sinking in, in rural Ontario, that the Ford government's health care policy of deliberate inaction is failing communities like Campbellford, Perth, Chesley St. Mary's. .
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Many elderly patients died when transferred 20 km from Perth to Smith’s Falls, during the Harris government’s hospital “reforms”. High death rates will follow as Bill 7 moves northerners 300 km from home and southerners 100 km. Bill 7 sacrifices one age cohort to open beds.
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Ontario wouldn't order GM to make N95s in Oshawa & we don’t have enough for front-line workers in health, education, childcare, retail, grocery & other sectors. The assumption Covid's end is around the corner should be rethought. We need to ramp up domestic production now.
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In the last year the Ford government built 325 new LTC beds. At this pace, it will take them over 84 years to get to the 30k new beds they promised by 2028 and there will be no relief to ALC pressures on hospitals.
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Asked about hospital wait times Premier Ford praised US hospitals & their "lean methodologies". Our hospitals are much leaner - fewest staff and beds in the OECD -and they have used lean methodologies for 25 years. What they aren't is adequately funded by the Ontario government.
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When Tim Hortons wants to increase profit, they make the donuts smaller. Private dialysis clinics do it by reducing treatment times by 25% below recommended levels, resulting in an 8% higher death rate. This is the inevitable moral depravity when capitalism and health care mix.
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Premier Ford said yesterday that he will not repeal Bill 124, which cut HCWs real wages 4% last year & made no announcement about meaningful HCW recruitment, as Quebec has done. The nursing shortage can't be fixed without increasing salaries and addressing workloads.
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2 hospitals recently threatened 3 HCWs who spoke to media about workloads & overcrowding. One nurse quit. This bullying reflects a sick workplace culture but the Ford government benefits, as during Covid, from a workforce that can’t comment on worsening conditions for patients
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The citizens of the town of Thessalon will march from their closed hospital to Highway 17 tomorrow afternoon to demand its re-opening. All of us should cheer on a community that demands an open ER and a functioning hospital in the face of Ford government underfunding.
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CDC admits today risk of virus infection from surfaces is 1 in 10,000. Ontario must acknowledge that Covid-19 is airborne & that's how the virus is transmitted. Ongoing denial of airborne transmission and failure to protect accordingly has killed thousands. #covidisairborne.
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" Whenever Ford is talking about health care he is losing votes." Let's each of us do whatever we can to raise the crisis in health care over the next nine days.
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Responding to RNs offered $750/shift to work in a private clinic, the Health Ministry said ‘the province was “excited” to see the Ottawa Hospital taking “innovative action”. A week ago the Minister assured us hospital staff would not be used to staff up the private clinics.
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CBC reports that ER and Urgent Care closures in Ontario are now at their highest level. The Ford government's failure to address the staffing crisis underlying these closures is badly hurting small town, rural and northern hospitals and their communities.
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Working people in Ontario should root for and stand with CUPE's education workers as their fight for wage increases comes to a head this week. When such a large group of workers rejects exploitation & poverty & chooses to fight for a better life, the working class is lifted up.
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