Manitoba’s largest labour union says the Wab Kinew government has nothing to learn from PC leader Obby Kahn on how to run health care in Manitoba.
“Obby Kahn was the face of a party that cut and privatized health care,” says Gina Mckay, President of CUPE Manitoba. “This government has no lessons to learn from the PCs.”
From 2016 to 2022 the Manitoba PC government closed emergency rooms, introduced wage freeze legislation to interfere in free and fair collective bargaining for front-line health workers, forced disruptive representation votes in health care pitting workers against each other and causing chaos, allowed for massive privatization of health care through increased agency use, and delisting of services. The PCs also failed to increase funding at the rate of inflation resulting in cuts and layoffs, and repeatedly reorganized health care unnecessarily causing staff to enter what their own CEO called the “pit of despair”. They also kept homecare workers at the back of the pack with subpar benefits, pension and wages even years after the union bargained for better.
“Health care workers do not want to see PC involvement in health care,” said McKay. “Their ideas were rejected by Manitobans two years ago very deliberately.”
Since the change in government, health care workers represented by CUPE have seen a fair collective agreement reached without political interference, the expansion of pension and benefits to homecare workers, hundreds of net new support workers hired into key areas, and significant funding to personal care homes to increase patient staff ratios.
“The work isn’t done; there is a lot more to do to fix health care after seven years of PC chaos,” said McKay. “But things are going in the right direction now. No one wants to turn back the clock except Obby Khan and his caucus.”