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CLEANERS have blamed job cuts at hospitals for the filthy emergency waiting areas exposed in a Daily Telegraph hygiene audit.

The Daily Telegraph conducted 30 hygiene tests at 15 hospitals and discovered 66 per cent of surfaces swabbed failed to meet hospitality industry standards, let alone hospital standards.

Three areas swabbed even contained unhygienic levels of the hospital bug staphylococcus.Figures from the Health Services Union reveal most of the 139 cleaning jobs lost in the past four years were at the hospitals that failed all of the hygiene tests.

the government has eliminated successor rights for cafeteria, janitorial and security employees in government-owned buildings

Successor rights allow employees to keep their jobs as well as their union, collective agreement, wages, seniority and benefits when a new contractor takes over their work. By removing these rights only for cafeteria, janitorial and security staff the Saskatchewan Party is telling workers in these fields that they don’t even deserve the relatively meager wage they currently receive.

With the current rules, unionized cleaners, security and food service staff in public institutions usually make $12-17 an hour and receive some benefits.

Published online before print June 22, 2016, doi: 10.1177/0019793916654482 ILR Review June 22, 2016 0019793916654482

*Adam Seth Litwin is an Associate Professor at the ILR School, Cornell University. Ariel C. Avgar is an Associate Professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Edmund R. Becker is a Professor at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University.

On any given day, about one in 25 hospital patients in the United States has a health care–associated infection (HAI) that the patient contracts as a direct result of his or her treatment. Fortunately, the spread of most HAIs can be halted through proper disinfection of surfaces and equipment. Consequently, cleaners—“environmental services” (EVS) in hospital parlance—must take on the important task of defending hospital patients (as well as staff and the broader community) from the spread of HAIs. Despite the importance of this task, hospitals frequently outsource this function, increasing the likelihood that these workers are under-rewarded, undertrained, and detached from the organization and the rest of the care team.

This paper provides a more rounded portrait of the job description, working conditions, and compensation of cleaners in Toronto, on the basis of census data, existing academic literature, and other sources. It finds that the pay of cleaners is low; in private-sector settings, pay is inadequate to lift cleaners with dependents above the poverty line, and fall well below the levels estimated by researchers to constitute a “living wage”.

impacts of outsourcing on the quality and safety of cleaning services, on the well-being of communities, and ultimately on the fiscal performance of all levels of government.

Compass Group Canada retains its monopoly over housekeeping and food services at Vancouver Island health facilities, despite the health authority's attempts to dump the contractor.

Vancouver Island Health Authority announced Thursday it has renewed its housekeeping contract, worth $10.61 million per year over five years, with Crothall Services Canada, a division of Compass.

"There have been some dreadful outbreaks, including C-Difficile and others, at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital and now the company that was responsible for cleaning is essentially getting rewarded with another contract," Krog said.

Scotland banned the contracting out of hospital housekeeping in 2008 and brought cleaning back in house. The result? According to the latest figures from Health Protection Scotland, cases of C. difficile have dropped dramatically.

News release It’s time for successorship laws that protect workers and ensure stable health care delivery, says the Hospital Employees’ Union March 2, 2015

Staff at a Surrey long-term care facility, and cleaners in Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals, have been given layoff notices by their corporate employers. The Ahmon Group has told more than 240 care aides, nurses, cleaners, and dietary workers that it will contract out all of their work at its Laurel Place care home in Surrey, effective June 1, 2015. The workers are members of HEU and signed a first collective agreement with Ahmon Group just last October. And Aramark – the U.S.-corporation that has held a commercial contract to clean Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals and extended care facilities since 2003 – has lost its contract and will lay off about 935 staff between August 9 and September 22.

Staff at a Surrey long-term care facility, and cleaners in Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals, have been given layoff notices by their corporate employers. The Ahmon Group has told more than 240 care aides, nurses, cleaners, and dietary workers that it will contract out all of their work at its Laurel Place care home in Surrey, effective June 1, 2015.

And Aramark – the U.S.-corporation that has held a commercial contract to clean Vancouver Coastal Health hospitals and extended care facilities since 2003 – has lost its contract and will lay off about 935 staff between August 9 and September 22.

HEU secretary-business manager says that stronger successorship language is needed to protect workers and services in a health care system that has seen significant privatization over the last decade.

Oct 18, 2014

Hamilton Spectator

Housekeepers refused to clean the room of a suspected Ebola patient at McMaster Children's Hospital and called in the Ministry of Labour to investigate a lack of training and knowledge about proper equipment.

Dec 2, 2015

Lack of adequate provincial funding for hospitals is again forcing cuts to patient care at Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital, says Brian Grant, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 4540. Grant will hold a media conference tomorrow (Thursday, December 3) at 10 a.m. outside the hospital at 43 Bruyere Street to highlight the impact of the most recent cuts. 

With the exception of caregivers who provide “companionship care” for the aged and infirm, domestic workers like nannies and house cleaners are covered by federal minimum wage laws

etails of Ontario hospital contracts with consultants, cafeteria operators, cleaning staff or baby formula suppliers remain secret even though hospitals became subject to Freedom of Information Act provisions at the start of 2012.

But exemptions in the act protect hospitals' economic interests and their ability to be competitive, so private third-party contracts (funded by taxpayer dollars) remain inaccessible.

Advocates of public sector accountability say the secrecy surrounding those contracts must change. "Hospitals have privatized a range of services from food services to IT contracts to construction contracts," said Natalie Mehra, director of the Ontario Health Coalition, a public health care advocacy group. "In various areas there are claims that contracts have gone to friends of the CEO, to third parties that don't have an arm's-length relationship with the board or its executives. "The things we need to know are: how much money, to whom exactly, for what services and what are the terms they are getting for those deals."

"They couldn't keep up with the amount of time she had to go to the washroom [so] she'd have an accident,"

Nearly a third of respondents, who included patients, health-care workers and relatives and friends of patients, said hospital rooms and bathrooms were not kept clean. Stories shared by res

Stories shared by res

the McGill University Health Centre is eliminating a special housekeeping squad devoted to eradicating C. difficile and other potentially deadly pathogens from patient rooms.

The MUHC set up the 10-person squad following the epidemic of Clostridium difficile-associated infections at the Montreal General Hospital in 2003-2004. More than 1,200 Quebecers died after contracting C. difficile diarrhea across the province during that epidemic

More funds and youth involvement are crucial for a long-term solution for remote First Nations communities, says NDP MP Charlie Angus.

Monday, April 18, 2016

PARLIAMENT HILL—NDP MP Charlie Angus, who is flying to Attawapiskat First Nation on Monday with Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett to meet with Chief Bruce Shisheesh, is calling for immediate action to provide critical services to the 2,000 residents of this northern Ontario community located in his riding.

Burnaby Hospital did not meet the provincial bench-mark in high-risk areas such as patient rooms during a cleaning audit conducted on March 29

Whenever a hospital misses the benchmark on its monthly cleaning audit and inspectors identify areas in need of attention, another audit is conducted within weeks,

"They had an intensive super-clean, which ended on March 23, and then they fell back to their normal low staffing levels and a week later they failed a cleaning audit," said Health Employees' Union spokesman Mike Old, adding there are not enough cleaning staff to keep the hospital safe for patients. The HEU represents cleaners at Burnaby Hospital, who are employed by service provider Aramark.

St. Joseph's Home Care is ready to compete for a flood of opportunity believed to be coming this fall when the province is expected to overhaul how contracts are awarded.

The home care agency — run by the same organization as St. Joseph's Hospital and Villa — cut wages by up to 15 per cent in all new contracts it wins.

The $13.96 starting hourly rate is now below Hamilton's living wage of $14.95. It takes five years to reach the top rate of $15.31.

Patient advocacy has always existed, but experts say that the phenomenon has become more pronounced than ever

the issue has caught the attention of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. In a two-part series published last week, the CMAJ concluded that "patient navigators (are) becoming the norm in Canada."

Historically, hospital social workers have fulfilled the role. But friends and relatives of patients have often stepped in to help. During the 2004 C. difficile hospital epidemic in Montreal, some family members whose loved ones fell ill from the diarrhea-causing bacterium told The Gazette that they hired private cleaners to scrub patient rooms.

The news that only 62 per cent of infection-control experts say the hospitals they work in are clean enough is more than a little disconcerting. In an online survey of experts from 119 Canadian hospitals, some 40 per cent of those who responded said their institutions are dirty enough to facilitate the spread of C. difficile and other nasty bugs

The statistics are a gross-out for Canadians who, quite rightly, assume that housekeeping staffin hospitals are trained to perform a high-calibre level of cleaning and sanitation.

Cleaning takes up to five per cent of operating budgets for hospitals. However, the problem may be less with the amount of money spent on cleaning and more on the training of cleaning staffthemselves. About one-third of those surveyed said their hospitals' cleaners aren't properly trained in cleaning and disinfection methods for patients' rooms.