More than 120 employees at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton were placed on leave after Halton Public Health banned unvaccinated staff from working in jail last week amid a COVID-19 outbreak, according to a union memo obtained by the Star.
The combination of outbreak control measures and staff shortages is raising concern for both inmates and jail staff, who have experienced frequent closures during the pandemic, especially during an outbreak earlier in the year that spread to 250 inmates and 100 staff members.
There are 80 cases related to the current outbreak, according to Halton Public Health. As of December 1, according to the Attorney General’s Ministry, there were 36 active inmate cases.
Most unvaccinated staff, including correctional officers, were placed on unpaid leave as of December 1 due to a public health order issued by local officials, outraging union leaders who say staff had been following the Ontario Public Service rules. Those regulations had allowed unvaccinated workers to undergo regular antigen testing as an alternative to vaccination.
The weekend memo from OPSEU Local 234 president Peter Figliola says 124 staff members working at Maplehurst are affected by the new requirement, including 16 people assigned to a unit housing inmates of the Ontario Correctional Institute. which closed after a major outbreak last year. As of 2019, the jail employed 440 correctional officers. The facility represented 1,078 members from Maplehurst and the neighboring women’s jail.
“The focus of this is not about who is vaccinated and who is not, the focus of this is that these people fulfilled a PAHO mandate and were punished for it,” Figliola said in an interview. The public health order does not stipulate that unvaccinated personnel must be given leave without pay.
Figliola said staff who can work at the jail are doing their best and working 12-14 hours a day and during breaks to keep the facility running, as other staff members face an unknown amount of unpaid time. .
“I feel like they are using us as a test to see what the reaction of the rest of the province is,” he said. He noted that proof of vaccination or testing is not a requirement for visitors to provincial prisons and said the union had been calling for this to be addressed for weeks.
“I honestly think this has set industrial relations back probably two decades,” he said.
Unlike police and transit workers, who were given a deadline and months’ notice to show they were fully vaccinated, jail staff were only informed on November 30 that Halton Public Health had issued a Section 22 order prohibiting unvaccinated personnel from entering jail. from noon the next day.
“The public health order is clear: unvaccinated employees cannot attend work. Therefore, these employees cannot perform the tasks for which they would normally be paid, ”said a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. “It would not be fair, appropriate or reasonable to place employees who chose not to get vaccinated, or who refused to attest to their vaccination status, on paid leave until the public health order is lifted. Doing so would create operational problems and could compromise our ability to ensure that the institution is adequately staffed during this challenging period. “
The ministry did not respond to questions about how the jail is dealing with the sudden drop in staff, or whether the province-wide vaccination policy for prison staff would change in light of the order.
The Section 22 order, which also covers cleaning protocols, PPE use and cohorting, was issued after the outbreak escalated in late November.
“As part of managing the outbreak, Halton Region Public Health has requested that all unvaccinated personnel not enter the facility for the duration of the outbreak. This is to protect unvaccinated staff and try to further limit the spread of COVID in this facility given the increased risk to such staff, ”said a Halton Public Health spokesperson.
The jail, which is no longer accepting new admissions, had been so crowded before the current outbreak that inmates were in triple bunks for months, meaning three people were being held in a small cell designed for a maximum of two people, with one person. sleeping on the floor.
“Inmates are always victims when there is some kind of labor dispute in the prisons,” said defense attorney Daniel Brown, vice president of the Criminal Lawyers Association.
He added that prison officials should have been required to get vaccinated without exemption from evidence long before this outbreak.
“The situation in Maplehurst and other prisons is a time bomb and it is shameful that the provincial government has not done more to protect the vulnerable inmate population from unvaccinated prison staff,” he said.
The Toronto East Detention Center declared an outbreak last week after a staff member tested positive for the Omicron variant.
Zya Brown of Think 2wice, an organization that works to reduce gun violence, has been in contact with some of the men incarcerated in jail over the past week. She says they have reported spending most of their time locked up in the last month since the outbreak was declared. During the lockdown, inmates are not allowed to leave their cells for all or most of the day. Some inmates told her that they had not been able to shower for three days and, in some cases, up to a week.
Some inmates are reporting disappearances in person and even court appearances by video, he said, which could further delay trials amid a backward court system and mean more time in custody.
The ministry denied that inmates have had delays in court appearances and said the facility is monitoring possible delays in procedures where video appearances are not possible.
There have been more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 among inmates in Ontario jails, and more than 10,000 cases related to jails and prisons in Canada. There has been one inmate death in an Ontario jail from COVID-19, according to the Ontario Coroner’s Office.
Reference-www.thestar.com