Hi folks:
I thought members of this list would be interested in the findings from 
research on the impact of privatization of health service.
It is distressing that health care agencies, such as regional health 
authorities and hospitals are unable to practice healthy public policy...
Madeline

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
For immediate release: Wed. April 21, 2004

Health care privatization eliminates pay equity gains


BC now has lowest hospital support wages in Canada

(Vancouver) Privatization has eliminated 30 years of pay equity gains and 
has put BC at the bottom of the barrel nationally when it comes to wages 
and benefits for women working in health support occupations.

This is the central finding of a study released today by the Canadian 
Centre for Policy Alternatives. It documents the dramatic reversal of pay 
equity resulting from the provincial government’s push to contract out 
hospital support services (cleaners, care aids and laundry, food service 
and clerical workers). “Bill 29 has turned the clock back thirty years on 
fair wages for women in health support occupations,” says co-author 
Marjorie Griffin Cohen, a CCPA research associate and Chair of SFU’s 
Women’s Studies Department.

“The provincial government claimed that wages for hospital support work 
were too high,” says Marjorie Griffin Cohen. “But they were in line with 
BC’s higher costs of living, and were comparable to wages for similar work 
in the direct public sector. It’s not like wages were simply trimmed back. 
At $9.25 to $11 an hour, the new rates are well below even the lowest 
negotiated wage in the private hospitality sector. And they are the lowest 
in Canada for hospital support work— 26 per cent below the national average.”

Marcy Cohen, co-author of the study and a researcher with the Hospital 
Employees’ Union, says “the new wages set the purchasing power of health 
support workers back to what they were in 1968.”

“Undermining the economic security of a mainly female and visible minority 
workforce is not something governments are likely to brag about. Yet that’s 
exactly what the BC government’s actions have achieved,” says Marcy Cohen. 
More than 50 per cent of HEU members have one or more dependent children, 
one quarter support a dependent adult and many live with partners who do 
not have access to extended health or pension benefits.

Bill 29’s elimination of job security and ‘no contracting-out’ provisions 
in existing collective agreements is unprecedented in the history of 
Canadian labour law. This is also true of the ‘partnership agreements’ 
between the IWA and the private multinational corporations bidding on 
contracted-out services. Marjorie Griffin Cohen notes, “This sets a 
dangerous precedent that is already being replicated by provincial 
governments in Ontario and Quebec.”



“A Return to Wage Discrimination:  Pay Equity Losses Through the 
Privatization of Health Care” is available at www.policyalternatives.ca 
<http://www.policyalternatives.ca/> . A summary of the study is also 
available online in English and French.

To arrange an interview, call Shannon Daub at 604-801-5121, ext 226.
__

A Return to Wage Discrimination: Pay Equity Losses Through the 
Privatization of Health Care
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, April 2004

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