MONTREAL-Less than a week after nine nurses were cut at the Montreal General, the axe was swung across the entire McGill health network on Tuesday as 164 people were informed they will lose their jobs.
That includes 13 management positions, and 151 full- and part-time staff, on top of 113 positions vacated by retiring workers which will not be filled.
Despite the job cuts, the MUHC stil has 296 positions to be filled, and managers said they hope people who have received layoff notices will apply to transfer to some of those open positions.
If they do not, the vacancies will not be filled until a hiring freeze is dropped.
But union representatives say the job cuts are too much.
"There's no way to give the same services to the people with all these cuts," said Paul Thomas of the CSN.
"As an example in a respiratory clinic there were three secretaries, now they've cut two secretaries, and the manager of this department said they believe they absolutely need three secretaries."
The job cuts come as the MUHC implements $50 million in cost cutting measures. The network still faces a deficit of $115 million, and anticipates more job cuts in the future.
