Blood services leadership should resign after admitting failure: OPSEU

TORONTO, Oct. 6, 2014 /CNW/ - It's time for the leadership at Canadian Blood Services to resign following the recent and frank admission of failure says the President of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

"If executives at Canadian Blood Services are looking for someone to blame for the lowest national blood inventory levels since 2008, they should look in the mirror," says Warren (Smokey) Thomas, President of the 130,000 member Ontario Public Service Employees Union. OPSEU represents the majority of CBS employees in the province.

Ontario staff at CBS are fuming about a recent memo sent on behalf of Ian Mumford, the Chief Supply Chain Officer, blaming the failure on a "serious performance gap" rather than CBS' own dismantling of the collection infrastructure.

In recent years CBS has closed two collection facilities in New Brunswick and Ontario, taken mobile blood units off the road, demoralized staff with messaging about ongoing downsizing and needlessly disrupted donation patterns by changing clinic boundaries.

CBS has also remained largely indifferent to a plan by the private for-profit Canadian Plasma Resources to operate rival plasma collection sites across Canada. That, according to CBS, would impact their donation base by a further 8 per cent.

"All along CBS has made cut after cut claiming demand was down and the surpluses great," says Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the 130,000-member Ontario Public Service Employees Union. "This latest admission suggests they were either misleading the public or are incapable of forecasting the needs of Canada's health system."

In the memo, Mumford writes the present appeal to donors "is not a measure of our success, but a measure of our failure to do our job. We are failing to meet our commitment to Canadians, to patients, to our funders, and to our hospital customers."

Thomas is urging the province of Ontario to take action by working with the other provincial stakeholders to ask for the resignation of Mumford and CEO Dr. Graham Sher.

SOURCE: Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)

Rick Janson at 416-443-8888 ext 8383.