Dirty laundry

It is with great dismay that Interior Health in their infinite wisdom (sic), have done service to the present provincial government's mantra, "public sector bad, private sector good". The selling off of the laundry services to a political friend is so typical of this government. This is not the first time this has happened. When Riverview's laundry was contracted out, it went to an individual who did not have a clue of how to run a commercial laundry, with predictably disastrous results. 

Before I moved up to the Okanagan, I worked for large, public sector, centralized laundry in Delta called Tilbury Regional Hospital Laundry. This facility was built as a centralized replacement for all the ageing laundries in the individual hospitals. It was a spectacular success. With 2 shifts of 60 workers, and only 6 managers, we produced more pounds-per-person than any laundry in North America. We were definitely not top-heavy with management. We always delivered. Often we had spectacular breakdowns of our excellent, but over-worked equipment. We would work all night to fill our orders if necessary.

There were many times we bailed out Surrey Memorial Hospital (Ecotex customer) with an emergency load of linen, when Ecotex could not deliver from Abbotsford. This would often happen in the worst snowy weather. We were "done-in" by constant political pressure on the health authorities to privatize services, regardless of cost. When Tilbury Laundry was closed, the linen went only to private operators, who promptly made things much more expensive. 

We were visited many times from laundry operators from all over the world. Our reputation was that good. Ecotex intends to build a "centralized" laundry, which seems very much like the successful Tilbury model. It is interesting that Ecotex is emulating a laundry distribution system, that it campaigned against a number of years ago.

If history repeats itself, the only things that will change will be; quality of product will go down, price of product will go up. Wages will drop to "convenience store" levels. There are no free rides. The present hospital laundry system is too important to subject to a pure "business model". Hospital laundry is a specialized "dirty business", which should not be given over to private laundry entrepreneurs. There is too much temptation to make short cuts in product quality. There is no way to make a profit in hospital laundry without sacrificing quality of product, or worker's wages. The comparatively meagre $1.75 million savings in each of the 20 years of the contract will be offset by the loss of the reasonably decent wages for the work, which will be subtracted from the local economy. 

Andrew Kiesewetter