Lab workers demand equal pay at Kitchener’s two main hospitals

Hospital staff in Kitchener hit the streets today to demand equal pay. CTV’s Karis Mapp heads to the picket line.

Unionized lab employees are sounding the alarm on pay discrepancies within the Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN).

Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital merged earlier this year to become a unified health organization.

While they now work together, some employees say they are not earning the same.

On Wednesday, unionized lab workers held a picket outside WRHN’s Midtown location, formerly known as Grand River Hospital, to demand equal pay. They said their counterparts at Queen’s Blvd. site, the former St. Mary’s Hospital, recently received a cost-of-living wage increase. The exact amount depended on whether the employee was a medical laboratory assistant or medical laboratory technologist, but demonstrators said it was as much as $7 an hour.

The difference between the two hospitals is Midtown lab employees are unionized, while workers at Queen’s Blvd. are not.

“We’ve always known that there was a wage gap,” said Trina Bueckert, a senior medical lab technician. “It is the exact same job. We are doing the exact same job as them.”

Only non-unionized employees were given the wage increase.

“If both parties are doing the same job, I don’t understand where you create a divide,” said Peter Figliola, OPSEU’s regional vice-president. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Before the two hospitals merged, many employees had to decide where they were going to work.

“A lot of them actually worked at both sites beforehand and were forced to pick a site,” explained Bueckert. “A lot of them choose to go [to Queen’s Blvd.], regardless of whether they wanted to stay [at Midtown] or not.”

Amberley Berman, a medical lab technologist, was one of the people forced to make a tough choice.

“I had to quit one of the hospitals to be able to stay employed,” she explained, adding that she lost eight years of seniority and took a pay cut, only to find out her former colleagues were making more than her.

“It’s very disheartening,” Berman said. “But I’m in a department that I truly love, doing the job I love to do.”

Other demonstrators echoed those sentiments.

“[I feel] undervalued,” said Bueckert. “We deserve a cost-of-living increase just as much as they do because we’re all paying for groceries and rent and mortgages and everything.”

CTV News requested an interview with a representative from the Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN). Instead, they provided the following statement.

Both employees and union officials call the timing of the pay increase suspicious.

“I believe that this was premeditated,” stated Figliola.

The next step for workers is to select a union representative for all staff.

“We have to do a vote to see if we will stay unionized or not,” Bueckert explained. “We have to decide if we’re going to stay. In that sense, it does seem like the hospital is trying to divide us and trying to sway our vote, to make us not unionized.”

“I believe that [WRHN] offered the non-unionized staff the raise to try and show them that maybe it’s better not having a union,” claimed Figliola.

“They chose to do it now, at a time when there is a labour board hearing [next] Monday to determine the bargaining units and representation,” added OPSEU’s Sara Labelle.

Demonstrators at the Midtown location told CTV News they hoped WRHN would give all employees a temporary cost-of-living increase before their unionization vote.

“[And they] recognize that we are doing the same job, just different campuses,” said Berman, adding that the Midtown workers are not in this fight alone. “It’s been amazing having all the support from all of my coworkers, people outside of the community, people just coming in and joining in solidarity together. It’s meant a lot for all of us to be able to have this kind of support.”

- With reporting by Karis Mapp