Quebec paramedics see pay cut for COVID-19 vaccination, testing – Montreal | 24CA News
Quebec paramedics are being pushed to the sideline in the event that they take part in a authorities program designed to struggle towards COVID-19.
The front-line health-care staff who’re registered within the JeContribue program are now not entitled to $32-an-hour pay to vaccinate or check individuals for COVID-19.
The wage for paramedics has been lower to $21 per hour.
“Very upset, very frustrated,” Marc-Olivier Plante, a paramedic within the Bas-Saint-Laurent area of Quebec, informed Global News.
Paramedics have been a part of an inventory of health-care professionals that included nurses and respiratory therapists collaborating within the JeContribue program when it was launched nearly three years in the past.
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It was a marketing campaign calling on health-care professionals to supply extra companies within the battle towards COVID-19, exterior of their predominant job.
But now the federal government has modified the classification of paramedics, leading to a pay lower when collaborating in this system.
“It’s very disrespectful and a big, big betrayal,” Plante mentioned.
The paramedic says he has suspended his involvement within the government-run program and doesn’t plan to return.
Plante’s not alone.
It’s estimated that there are greater than 1,000 paramedics concerned in JeContribue — and lots of are anticipated to drop out.
“With a $21 contribution, I guess we will just do our job as paramedic,” Jean-François Gagné, a paramedic union consultant, informed Global News.
Gagné is telling his members to stop collaborating when nurses and respiratory therapists proceed to generate profits for a similar work.
“It’s a big lack of respect for the paramedics,” Gagné mentioned.
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In an electronic mail to Global News, the press attachée to Health Minister Christian Dubé, Antoine de la Durantaye, writes: “We are no longer in a hygiene or sanitation health emergency. We therefore, have to respect the job title of each of our professionals.”
The JeContribue web site states that this system is “not looking for candidates at this time” within the vaccination efforts towards COVID-19.
An on-line group that tracks pre-hospital care in actual time warns that the federal government’s choice might create a well being threat to the general public the following time it calls on paramedics to assist.
“I think that the real danger is that paramedics won’t contribute anymore,” Hal Newman of The Last Ambulance informed Global News.
The choice is discouraging paramedics to do anything however their job.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
