Toronto community groups will call out University Health Network (UHN) at its downtown University Ave. doorstep with a noon rally tomorrow (Thursday, July 15) for what they say is a deliberate workforce policy by UHN of exploiting racialized women as cheap labour.

UHN is avoiding the direct employment of patient rehabilitation care staff at its Hillcrest site who earn wages far below other hospital personal support workers and nurses. The hospital has also left part-time clerical without a first contract, for several years. It’s an “inexcusable” practice seen as a growing blemish on the reputation of UHN, the largest hospital system in the country, say the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and Toronto & York Region Labour Council.

At the Hillcrest Reactivation Centre, UHN has contracted out what until recently have been direct hospital patient care supports, to a home care company that pays PSWs, registered practical nurses (RPNs) sub-par wages. These workers and several hundred part-time clericals are paid as much as $7.00 less an hour than people doing the same work at UHN.

Both the part-time clerical employees of the University Health Network and the people working at the Hillcrest hospital site of UHN are almost all women and most are racialized.

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