http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/2009/11/03/11616276.html?comments_page=3&id=11616276#/news/columnists/mark_bonokoski/2009/11/03/pf-11613581.htmlGuards protest vaccination
Upset inmates getting swine flu shots while staff goes without
By MARK BONOKOSKI
Last Updated: 3rd November 2009, 5:22am
The Toronto West Detention Centre went into brief lockdown yesterday as plans to immunize all inmates across the province with the H1N1 vaccine were unexpectedly nixed at the last moment -- leaving at least 43 vials of the vaccine in cold-storage limbo at the Etobicoke holding facility.
In the end, only 70 inmates identified as high-risk flu candidates were eventually administered the vaccine, thereby using up seven of the 50 vials on hand, although a poll by the institute's nursing staff last week came up with 282 inmates requesting the vaccine.
The three-hour lockdown, which effectively confined all 641 inmates to their cells and brought all visits to a halt, came into play at noon yesterday when guards initiated a "work refusal," citing the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Service for its failure to properly institute its contingency plan for an influenza pandemic.
And the guards are not wrong.
Objective No. 1 of the ministry's pandemic plan, as outlined in a document obtained by the Sun, promises to "protect the health and safety of staff, inmates and the general public by implementing infection prevention and control measures."
Yet, in reality, the ministry not only cancelled the seasonal flu clinic held annually at the centre, as well as at all correctional facilities across the province, it has also excluded staff from swine flu inoculations.
It's prisoners only.
So, in the vernacular of the guards, it was "tools down, and shut them down," until a ministry labour mediator downgraded their actions to a "complaint" and ruled them back to work.
The work protest came in the wake of a Sun exclusive last week that inmates at Ontario's jails were to be vaccinated for the swine flu -- beginning yesterday -- while the guards protecting them were told their clinics have been cancelled.
One inmate at the Toronto (Don) Jail was purportedly diagnosed with the swine flu yesterday, leaving the guards' union feeling even more hung out to dry.
"We have to deal with these guys every day," said Toronto West guard Matt Duffy, chief steward for OPSEU Local 517. "These guys don't wash their hands, they live in their own filth, and we have to work among them every day -- face-to-face, and breathing the same unventilated air that they breathe.
"Yet they get slated for the shot and we don't."
Dismal conditions at Toronto's detention centres, even in normal situations, are historic -- which is why two-for-one, at the very least, has so become the norm in judges' sentencing that they are rarely questioned by Crown prosecutors, the media or the attorney general's office.
Last December, for example, Premier Dalton McGuinty asked Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci to investigate high absentee rates among provincial corrections officers after Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter's annual report indicated jail guards book off sick an average of 32 days a year -- almost three times the average threshold.
In response, Don Jail guard Crystal Moore, a vice-president of OPSEU Local 530, invited Bartolucci to tour the Don with her, and not with the carefully managed group that took him on a clinical tour a few weeks previous.
And she gave him some advice to prep.
"Please make sure you get your blood tested, as inmates carry every disease known, including but not limited to, Hep A, B, C, HIV/AIDS etc.," she wrote. "Stock up on cold medicines, as you are liable to catch a cold or the flu, since you are 'in their face.' The air in the inmate living unit, by the way, would be unacceptable in your place of work."
Bartolucci took a pass.
Meanwhile, back at the West, while 70 inmates were getting inoculated yesterday, all because they supposedly qualified as vulnerable, jail guard Anita Mastracci, seven months into her pregnancy, was not allowed to get one of the doses being dished out at her very jail where she works.
"Because my (family) doctor has yet to get the vaccine, I am going to have to stand in line at one of the public clinics," said the 36-year-old expectant mother.
"Forget that I am pregnant for a minute, but if I don't qualify as being a frontline worker when the prisoners around me are getting the vaccine, then who does?"
The 11th-hour cancellation of inoculations of all inmates came yesterday morning in a memo to all Ontario public service staff from Ron McKerlie, deputy minister of government services.
He blamed the change of plan on the unexpected shortage of vaccine, and then listed those who would qualify for the shot until adequate supplies were ramped up.
Among those who would qualify, of course, are pregnant women like Anita Mastracci.
Unfortunately for her, she is on the wrong side of the prison bars for her government bosses to care.
MARK.BONOKOSKI@SUNMEDIA.CA OR 416-947-2445
