Public sector workers rally in Charlottetown for better support and against privatization

Dozens of people rallied in Charlottetown on Thursday to urge the province to better support public services and recognize the essential workers who maintain them.

Many of the people gathered were public sector workers, who assembled outside the provincial government office on Rochford Street.

The rally was organized by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) P.E.I., which represents public sector workers in areas such as education, health care, municipalities and post-secondary education.

"We have been asking for respect at the bargaining table for responses to questions and queries that we have for government to meaningfully invest in public services for ages and ages and ages and we have been ignored over and over and over again," said Ashley Clark, CUPE P.E.I. president.

Clark said the rally was meant to send a message to the province that public services are not luxuries, but essential infrastructure that supports the well-being of entire communities. Services like health care and education, she added, are fundamental rights.

"Those are the things that people rely on, that people need to live… and this government has consistently been showing that they would rather sell those off than do their jobs and invest in them and support them and allow them to thrive."

Clark added that labour relations will be a central issue in the upcoming byelections in the province.

"You need to value the people that live here, that work here. These are your constituents."

Privatization concerns

Clark said the union and its members have been trying to raise concerns with the province about the potential privatization of the public health system, and the province should instead focus on investing more in public services.

Their primary concern centres around what Clark calls the "privatization playbook" — a systematic approach she believes is undermining public services.

This strategy, she said, begins with starving sectors of resources through austerity and cutbacks, which can lead to public sector workers losing hours and wages. Then comes short staffing, causing systems to crumble. As services deteriorate, people become desperate, and that can create an opening for private sector intervention.

"When a private company swoops in, arm's length from the government … they don't have to be accountable," she said.

"They swoop in and they make profit off of the things that we need to survive."

She added: "If the same service were offered in the public sector, any revenue would get reinvested in that system, would go back to worker wages, would go back to benefits, would go back to having properly resourced facilities and institutions."

In a statement to CBC News, the province said it acknowledges the concerns raised by the union and values the important work public sector employees do across the province.

"There is no plan to privatize public health services. Our focus remains on improving the services Islanders rely on, supporting frontline workers, and working together to build a stronger more resilient health-care system," the province said.

CUPE P.E.I. isn't alone in its concerns.

Other groups on the Island have raised alarms about health-care service privatization. The P.E.I. Union of Public Sector Employees has recently expressed concerns about a home-care program by Health P.E.I., which they say is an example of health-care privatization and seems to be millions of dollars over budget.

Unaddressed issues in education

Clark also pointed out that the union's members working in schools have been vocal about their challenges, with the government failing to address these issues.

One of the most alarming concerns, she said, is the workplace violence in schools, where some educators are regularly subjected to physical and verbal abuse.

"They're going to bargaining tables and being pushed into conciliation and binding arbitration because the government is not bringing fair wages to the table. They are not bringing improvements to the health and safety concerns that our members have every day in schools," she said.

"Those are the things that we want to address through bargaining, and we're not seeing that happen… We are not being listened to."