About two dozen St. Paul’s Hospital employees are staging a sit-in at this hour outside the office of Providence Health Care CEO Carl Roy to protest plans to lay off 275 food service workers.
Roy’s office is located at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver on the fifth floor (5 South).
The workers are calling on the head of the Catholic hospital group to reconsider plans to privatize in-patient and retail food services at St. Paul’s, Mount St. Joseph, Holy Family and at other hospitals it operates.
Last week, Providence rejected a proposal from unionized workers that included significant wage concessions in a bid to keep the hospitals’ dietary services in-house.
The workers say they’ll stay until they’ve had a chance to raise their concerns with the Providence Health leadership and find out why their proposal was rejected.
-30- Contact: Mike Old, communications officer, 604-828-6771 (cell)