CUPE 786 members at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton held a rally this morning to protest job cuts. The hospital is eliminating more than 60 positions including personal support workers, clerical and administrative staff in response to provincial underfunding.
“The job cuts are unacceptable. There is no logical reason to eliminate positions when we are experiencing a staffing shortage, and struggling to maintain our service levels,” said Rick Rigby, president of CUPE 786, which represents about 2,000 hospital staff.
“Hospital staff simply want to show up and provide compassionate and high quality care to people. But the constant drive to cut costs harms morale, adds to workplace stress and violence, and makes it very challenging to serve patients to the best of our abilities. The government must stop these cuts,” he said.
The provincial government’s recent budget increased hospital funding by “up to four per cent” but this is an effective cut with costs rising by six per cent.
A recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that ER wait-times have increased across the province, including at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, due to a staffing and capacity shortfall. In 2024-25, 90 per cent of patients at St. Joseph’s waited 33.6 hours for admission to a bed compared to 30.8 hours five years ago.
In addition to outright job cuts, the hospital is also cutting weekend hours for clerical staff and transferring their responsibilities to nurses. Rigby said that this will reduce the amount of time that nurses have for patients.
“We know the life-saving role of nurse-to-patient ratios, so to take that time away from nurses and ask them to take on clerical roles is dangerous” he said. “There is a real impact on patient health outcomes being when you starve them of nursing care.”
Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, said “the government’s decision to cut funding represents a deliberate destabilization of the hospitals just as they face the demands of an aging and growing population.”
“These cuts have a profound, and traumatic impact on patients, particularly the elderly, who lie on stretchers in hallways for an average of a day and a half and who don’t receive appropriate and timely care because there just are not enough staff,” he says. “Hospital workers will not stand by while patient care is degraded like this by a government that cuts hospital spending in real terms every single year.”
