Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Reporter
The union representing medical imaging technicians in the Outaouais has said five of the six full-time technicians currently serving the Pontiac have been offered higher-paying positions elsewhere and plan to leave their current jobs in the Pontiac by Sept. 9.
These technicians applied for positions in Hull, Gatineau and Papineau hospitals when, this spring, the Quebec government offered $22,000 bonuses to positions in those hospitals in an attempt to keep technicians employed there from moving to higher-paying jobs in Ontario.
After the technicians’ union (APTS), local politicians and healthcare advocacy groups all sounded the alarm that these bonus incentives would only draw technicians away from hospitals in Maniwaki, Wakefield and Pontiac to higher paying positions closer to Ottawa, the government offered $18,000 bonuses to technicians in those three rural hospitals.
Technicians in Wakefield and Pontiac were the last to get these bonuses, and the union is now saying they may have come too late.
Christine Prégent, Outaouais representative for APTS, said the government needs to offer equal bonuses across the region, or technicians will follow through on their plans to leave the Pontiac.
“One is going to Papineau, one to Gatineau, and the other three to Hull,” Prégent said in French, noting that for some, even the temporary $22,000 bonuses are not incentive enough to stay in Quebec.
“There are two in these five who are in the process of applying to jobs in Ontario as well, and could in fact quit CISSSO altogether.”
She said on Thursday members of the union met with the province’s Deputy Minister of Health Richard Deschamps for the better part of an hour and reiterated the same concerns they have been highlighting for months – that offering lesser bonus amounts to rural hospitals will lead to an exodus of technicians from those hospitals.
“For us it’s necessary the government finds a solution to keep the technicians in place,” she said.
Prégent emphasized that not only have the bonuses offered to Pontiac staff failed to retain them, but the $4,000 discrepancy will make it difficult for the hospital to recruit new technicians to the five soon-to-be-vacant positions.
By the APTS’s numbers, there are currently eight vacant positions at the Gatineau hospital, two of which will be filled by Sept. 9, and 14 empty jobs at the Hull hospital, four of which will also be filled by Sept. 9. In Papineau, there are 5 vacant positions, one of which will also be filled in September.
This leaves 20 empty positions that come with a $22,000 bonus that will still need to be filled after Pontiac loses five of its technicians.
“There are still job openings in Hull and Gatineau and Papineau,” Prégent said. “So why would I go give my CV to Wakefield, Shawville or Maniwaki, if I can go get a job in Hull and get a higher bonus?”
Pontiac MNA André Fortin said while equalizing the bonuses is a necessary immediate fix, it will do nothing to address the root cause of the staffing crisis across the Outaouais healthcare sector.
“They have to come to an understanding that if you want to keep healthcare workers from the Outaouais in Quebec, you have to pay them a similar amount to what Ontario pays them now,” he said.
THE EQUITY reached out to CISSSO to learn what the regional healthcare network is doing to prepare for the scenario where Pontiac loses these five technicians in just over a month.
“With regard to the situation of technologists, we are still in solution mode to address possible movements of technologists in partnership with ministerial authorities via the committee responsible for monitoring the implementation of bonuses,” a spokesperson for the network wrote in an email.
“The CISSS de l’Outaouais is addressing this situation as a matter of priority in order to provide care and services to the entire region’s population.”
Fortin said he is in regular contact with Quebec’s treasury board president Sonia LeBel to urge immediate equalization of bonuses.
“In my mind, a month is not the leeway the government has here. By a month from now, these workers will have rearranged their lives and schedules around a new job in a city, so the timeline for the government to change its decision [ . . . ] is actually much shorter than that,” Fortin said.
“You cannot go ahead with the basic services usually offered in a hospital with a single imagery tech, so if it comes to bear, this would cripple the functioning of our rural hospitals in the Pontiac and across the Outaouais.”