AHS staff face job terminations and transfer offers in midst of health-care overhaul

Health-care staff are now being shifted from Alberta Health Services to the provincial health department as the province forges ahead with its controversial and sweeping restructuring plans.

The Alberta government announced its intention late last year to hive off health-care provision into four key organizations, and reduce AHS to the role of a hospital care provider.

So far, 126 AHS staff have been terminated but have been presented with "equivalent" job offers within Alberta Health, according to the province.

A government spokesperson has confirmed the impacted staff are from the departments of capital planning, system planning, continuing care and procurement.

The press secretary to Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said most of them have taken the offers and have begun their Government of Alberta jobs.

"It's very unsettling," said Sandra Azocar, vice-president with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE).

"What we have been seeing is memos sent to front-line workers telling them that they have a couple of weeks to make a decision whether or not to stay with the government or take the layoff and recall. And so not very much … consultation is actually happening."

According to Azocar, the union is aware so far of 39 affected members, most of them general support staff working in administrative roles.

A former AHS executive is worried the upheaval is leading to more anxiety among health-care staff at a time when the health system is already under intense pressure. He believes it will further disrupt Alberta's ability to recruit and retain much needed workers — ranging from front-line staff and support workers to higher level decision-makers.

"We're experiencing a lot of self-inflicted wounds right now and we don't need to be experiencing those self-inflicted wounds," said Dr. Braden Manns, a former interim vice-president of provincial clinical programs at AHS.

Manns said impacted staff have been reaching out to him, given his previous AHS role. Some of them have decided not to take the new job offers, he said.

"People were concerned that their contracts were terminated and that the contract they were being offered was not as competitive as the contract that they had with Alberta Health Services," said Manns, a kidney specialist and professor of health economics in the department of medicine at the University of Calgary.

"These are the poorly thought through consequences that are going to happen if you move from one organization to another."

Azocar is also worried about compensation.