Union upset over contract

By Adrian Nieoczym - Kelowna Capital News Published: August 21, 2008

Under a private-public partnership deal,hospital maintenance for expanded facilities in Vernon and Kelowna will be privatized.

Negotiations on a construction contract for the expansion of Kelowna General Hospital have been completed, the provincial government announced Thursday. However, the Hospital Employees Union is crying foul over the decision to contract out hospital maintenance as part of the public-private partnership. Infusion Health was selected as the preferred proponent in May. It now has a $432.5-million fixed-price contract covering the expansions of both KGH and Vernon Jubilee Hospital. “This is very exciting,” said Interior Health’s chief operating officer for the Okanagan, Joanne Konnert. “The detailed design work will now begin in earnest with the preferred proponent.” While IH will be responsible for all clinical, housekeeping and food services, Infusion Health will be responsible for designing, building and financing the new facilities, as well as maintaining both the new and old parts of the two hospitals for the next 30 years. Maintenance of both hospitals is currently done by HEU members working for IH. And until yesterday’s announcement, IH had held out the possibility of keeping those jobs in-house.

HEU says more that 53 experienced trades and maintenance workers will be losing their jobs as a result of the public-private partnership. “Our trades and maintenance workers avert crises every day by maintaining the hospitals’ electrical, mechanical and other systems in good working order, or by rapidly responding to unexpected emergencies like power outages, plumbing problems and equipment breakdowns,” said HEU’s business manager Judy Darcy in a statement. “The IHA is going to toss their years of experience and dedication aside in favour of a private firm that cannot deliver the same high quality of services, experience and commitment that our members provide every day.” Konnert said it just didn’t make sense to have two different organizations, IH and Infusion Health, responsible for maintaining different sections of the hospitals. “We would have a number of systems, like security systems and fire systems and nurse call systems, and having two separate organizations for those systems was problematic because those are pretty crucial systems.” She added that if a maintenance problem arose, hospital staff would have to figure out which organization’s help desk to call, depending on the location of the problem.

“It’s just more effective to have one group of folks managing the plant across the whole plant.” Konnert also said that because the contractor is responsible for the new facilities for 30 years, they want to make sure they have their own people doing the maintenance work in those sections. This ruled out the possibility of IH being responsible for all maintenance at the hospitals. The new patient care tower at KGH will include a consolidated outpatient department, an emergency department, new operating rooms, a rooftop heli-pad, two shelled-in floors for inpatient beds, a renal dialysis department and a clinical academic campus for a UBC faculty of medicine. Konnert said construction on the tower should begin next year.