Laundry Workers’ Industrial Action Disrupts Operations at Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre

Industrial action by laundry and maintenance employees at the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre has disrupted hospital operations, leaving some departments without enough clean linen and delaying the movement of patients to wards.

The employees continued their protest action on Thursday, one day after staging a sit-in near the entrance of the hospital over disputed payments and demands for increased compensation.

Speaking exclusively to Antigua.new Thursday, Director of Administration at the medical centre, Danley Phillip, said the slowdown in the hospital’s laundry department had serious consequences for patient care on Wednesday.

“To the extent that we went without linen for some of the beds, people were not able to go to the wards because there wasn’t any linen available,” Phillip said.

He explained that the dispute involving laundry employees began after they refused to wash linen from the recently relocated Sickle Cell Centre. According to Phillip, the employees argued that handling linen from that facility represented additional work.

However, the administration rejected that position, maintaining that the workers had already been processing the same linen when the Sickle Cell Unit operated from the hospital compound.

“We explained to them that it cannot be more work because they have been washing the same linen while the unit was here at Mount St. John’s,” Phillip said. “What we simply did was move it to another location so that we could improve patient care.”

The administration reportedly asked the employees to provide evidence showing that the relocation had resulted in a material increase in their workload. Phillip said no such information was submitted.

He accused the employees of subsequently embarking on a “go-slow,” alleging that they not only refused to wash linen from the Sickle Cell Centre but also processed the hospital’s general laundry at a significantly reduced pace.

Phillip said hospital management received no formal notification before Wednesday’s protest and only became aware of the action through reports circulating on social media.

He stressed that the hospital provides an essential service and warned that industrial action becomes especially serious when it interferes with patient care.

Phillip said the organisation claiming to represent the employees was informed that, although staff members are free to seek representation, established protocols must be followed before industrial action is taken.

The employees were issued a letter through the Human Resources Department instructing them to return to their assigned duties. However, Phillip said the protest continued Thursday without further formal notification to the administration.

Maintenance employees who joined the action have reportedly requested a salary increase of approximately 60 per cent. The administration has asked them to provide justification for the proposed increase.

Workers have also claimed that they are owed COVID-19-related payments. Phillip disputed that assertion, saying he was unaware of any COVID-19 allowance being formally granted to either the laundry or maintenance employees.

He said allowances were provided during the pandemic to selected employees who were considered to have faced particularly high levels of exposure.

“If you have an outstanding COVID allowance, it means it was granted to you and you received either a portion of it or not the full amount,” Phillip explained. “I am not aware that any laundry staff or maintenance staff received any COVID allowance, so it is erroneous to say that there is an outstanding COVID allowance payment.”

Phillip acknowledged that laundry employees may believe they deserved an allowance because they handled potentially contaminated linen during the pandemic. However, he maintained that this was different from claiming that an approved payment remained outstanding.

Hospital management has urged the employees to resume their duties while their concerns are addressed through the appropriate channels.