Ontario’s largest hospital sector union representing 45,000 staff begins bargaining today with the Ontario Hospital Association. CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) says its main priorities are nurse-to-patient ratios, job security, and compensation.
“There are over 100 studies that found that safe staffing in the form of nurse-to-patient ratios saves lives – what could be more important than that?” said Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE. “Implementing ratios would create a transformative change in Ontario’s hospitals, vastly improving quality-of-care, reducing workloads, and achieving significant cost-savings. These are all well-documented findings from other jurisdictions, and we hope that the hospital association will seriously consider this proposal.”
Minimum nurse-to-patient ratios have recently been introduced in British Columbia and Nova Scotia and are being studied in Manitoba. Nursing staffing standards initially came into effect in California in 2004, followed by other jurisdictions in the U.S. and Australia.
Hurley said that staffing ratios would alleviate the nursing shortage, citing the example of the Australian province of Victoria. After nursing ratios were implemented there in 2015, hospitals witnessed a 24% increase in staffing as over 7,000 inactive nurses returned to the workforce.
Embedding staffing ratios in the contract would go a long way towards improving working conditions in a sector where chronic exhaustion and burnout has led to high turnover, with a 331% increase in job vacancies since 2015.
Sharon Richer, secretary-treasurer of OCHU-CUPE, said staffing shortages are also attributable to insufficient wage growth.
She said compensation for the predominantly female and disproportionately racialized workforce hasn’t kept up with inflation, with the average wage for vacant hospital positions 13% lower in 2024 relative to 2015.
“Workers are expected to take on heavier workloads and much more responsibility, while seeing their real incomes decline,” she said. “That’s the reason why so many people continue to quit the workforce. The consequences of this policy are borne by the public as staffing shortages lead to longer wait-times, delayed treatments, and alarming levels of service closures.”
The union is also concerned about the increased usage of artificial intelligence in hospitals and wants to ensure that any technological change is adopted with full transparency from the employer, after meaningful consultation with the union.
“Hospitals have not been honest about the impact of technology,” said Hurley. “The increasing use of AI is premised on wiping out jobs and reducing costs, even if there are undisclosed negative implications for patients and staff. Robots developed to interact with acutely ill patients is an example of the misguided, cost-driven use of technology.”
“If technological upgrades are essential to improving quality, then we expect the hospitals to train displaced staff. If we don’t need as many clerical staff, we can retrain them to become nurses, where there is an acute shortage,” he added.
Bargaining takes place the weeks of September 15 and September 29. The length of the previous contract was two years, running from September 2023 to September 2025.