Healthcare Unions Say 91 Workers To Be Laid Off, NSH Say That Is False

HALIFAX – Two unions representing healthcare workers in Nova Scotia are accusing Nova Scotia Health of taking work away from the public sector and transferring it to a private, American-based, company.

In a joint press release, CUPE and NSGEU say 91 health care workers, who are responsible for scanning and archiving medical records, will lose their jobs when the company, Iron Mountain, takes over those responsibilities. Iron Mountain has a Burnside location. The unions say 84 of the 91 affected workers are women.

“The work our members do is incredibly valuable, and it is not in Nova Scotians’ best interest to allow a private company to take over our citizens’ health records management,” said CUPE Nova Scotia President Nan McFadgen, in a press release.

NSH disputes the union’s claim that any workers will be laid off and accused the organizations of spreading false information in their press release. The health authority said affected employees can be transferred and any job losses would be through attrition and vacancies.

“Should the decision be made to proceed after the holiday season, this would mean changes for some of our employees; however, our goal would be to find equivalent or like positions within the organization,” Andrew Nemirovsky, Senior Director IM/IT for NSH.

“If we proceed, we will make every effort to minimize adverse effects on our employees. It is expected that any reduction in the number of employee positions would be achieved through vacancies and normal attrition.

“We understand that this brings uncertainty and questions and we are continuing to evaluate to determine how we move forward. A release issued by the unions suggesting 91 jobs will be lost is inaccurate and may cause undue stress to our employees.”

NSGEU President Jason MacLean said, however, that the union has not been told where the affected employees will be transferred within the healthcare system. For him, that is the equivalent of being laid off.

“The employer has not supplied a list of vacancies where these people would go. So, as far as we’re concerned, these people are going to be losing their jobs,” stated MacLean.

MacLean said the union was officially notified of this decision by NSH on October 20. The press release only came out on December 21 because they were trying to fight the decision for the past two months.

“We were told vaguely some time ago that they would be looking at making changes in the future but, officially, we weren’t told until October,” said MacLean.

“I was trying to stop it.”

MacLean alleges that NSH is transferring the archival work to Iron Mountain because the health authority wants to save money. MacLean also claims the union was told there were issues with the quality of the work being done.

“It’s all about saving money, but we don’t believe it’s saving money,” said MacLean.

“They allege that were quality control issues; that a lot of the scanning equipment they had was outdated and there was a lot of fuzzy scans and mistakes being done.”

The NSGEU president says the workers were never told they were making mistakes with the scans.

In the NSH press release, Nemirovsky did not state why the health authority chose to transfer the work to Iron Mountain, other than to say the company already handles documents for them.

“Since 1981, our existing vendor has been entrusted with records management for the former district health authorities and Nova Scotia Health and already manages more than 8 million of our records,” said Nemirovsky.

MacLean also alleges NSH will be costing taxpayers more money because they didn’t put out a new contract for public tender. Rather, they handed the work to Iron Mountain.

“We were told by the employer that they’re just amending their contract with Iron Mountain,” said MacLean.

“That’s not amending, that’s just bringing them a bunch of new work they currently don’t have.”

In his written statement to Huddle, Nemirovsky did say they are “leveraging an existing partnership,” without listing Iron Mountain by name.

“In an effort to continuously improve timely access to quality health information required for the delivery of the best patient care, we have been exploring leveraging an existing partnership with a company, with a local office, that specializes in managing patient health records and documentation, to manage this service on our behalf,” said Nemirovsky.

The NSGEU believes this transfer of responsibilities to the private sector is in contrast to what is laid out in the collective bargaining agreement and has filed a grievance.