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All hospital pharmacists deserve wage parity November 27, 2006 Yvonne Jones, Opposition Health Critic and MHA for the District of Cartwright-L’Anse au Clair, says government is shrugging its responsibility to pharmacists and the province’s health care system. Jones raised the issue in the House of Assembly this afternoon. "It is unfortunate that Eastern Health was forced to find $1 million in its budget in an effort to retain pharmacists in this region of our province," said Ms. Jones. "Instead of being proactive and investing additional money into our health care system to recruit and retain hospital pharmacists, our government is forcing our health care boards to accumulate additional debt in order to retain health care professionals. "In Labrador, the health care board is being forced to offer $15,000 to attract pharmacists, and in the Eastern region, the health care board will be offering an extra $12,000. Unfortunately, the Central health care board and the Western health care board will be competing for these same pharmacists, but offering lower wages. Eventually, the end result will be a loss of pharmacy services somewhere in the province. Health boards are already in serious debt and they will have to find cost-savings elsewhere in order to keep their pharmacists. It is shameful that government would put the boards in this situation, rather than make a much-needed investment in our public pharmacy system. "It is obvious that this government is willing to sit back and allow this situation to unfold. Instead of addressing wage disparity issues and offering wage parity with their Atlantic counterparts, government has put this responsibility on our health care boards without providing them with additional funding. In the end, nobody will benefit as cuts will be made to other health care services and there will be no uniform wage system for pharmacists in all areas of our province. This is truly unfortunate and will certainly lead to more problems."
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