Kingston CUPE health-care workers protest return-to-office mandate

Article content

KINGSTON — A small group of Canadian Union of Public Employees members braved Monday’s snow to protest the Ontario government’s return-to-office mandate.

Article content

Four workers at the Ontario government health-care offices in the City Place buildings walked along John Counter Boulevard to protest the change.

The Ontario government set Monday as the deadline for its workers to return to working at the office full time, almost six years after a shift to working from home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the return to working at an office five days a week is opposed by the unions representing government workers.

“Everybody had to change their life when COVID happened. We were forced to work from home,” said Kingston CUPE member Kelly Golden. “Everybody had to alter their life, find child care, they had to make an office in their home, figure all of that out. It’s worked for six years.”

Article content

Article content

The unions are calling for the government to allow a more flexible hybrid model that would allow workers to work from home some days.

Golden said in Kingston there is not enough space to accommodate all of the workers all of the time.

“Some care coordinators, if they do have to come to the office, they don’t have an assigned desk,” she said. “If there are no desks available, they have to go up to everybody’s desk and figure out if anyone is working there.

“Some of them have to literally walk around and look for a place to sit,” she said. “That time could be put into our patients who need care.”

The up to 15 centimetres of snow falling on the Kingston area Monday illustrated another benefit to allowing employees to work from home.

Article content

“It also allowed us to work through storms easily,” said Jennafer McGinn.

Instead, with school buses in the area cancelled, many provincial workers had to call in late to work while they drove their children to school.

The return-to-office order also has economic impacts, too, she added.

“A lot of us live north of Kingston, so I bought my groceries in Sydenham at the Food Land, and now I’m in town five days a week, I’m going to Costco and Walmart,” McGinn said.

“The government pushed the economy, but really we’re just transitioning where we spend our money into the big conglomerate stores instead of supporting local.”

The return-to-office mandate is also not being applied equally across the Kingston area, Golden said. Health-care workers in Belleville, Napanee and Kingston have different working conditions, with some continuing to work from home, some allowed a hybrid model and others required to be in the office five days a week.

“The inequity across the board is a little frustrating,” Golden said.

[email protected]

Article content