More than 120 staff at Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton have been placed on leave after Halton Public Health banned unvaccinated staff from working at the jail last week amid a COVID-19 outbreak, according to a union memo obtained by the Star.
The combination of outbreak control measures and staffing shortages is raising concerns for both inmates and staff at the jail, which has seen frequent lockdowns through the pandemic particularly during an outbreak at the start of the year that spread through 250 inmates and 100 staff members.
There are 80 cases linked to the current outbreak, according to Halton Public Health. As of Dec. 1, according to the Ministry of the Solicitor General, there were 36 active inmate cases.
The majority of the unvaccinated staff, including correctional officers, were placed on unpaid leave as of Dec. 1 due to a public health order issued by local officials, outraging union leadership who say staff had been following Ontario Public Service rules. Those rules had allowed unvaccinated workers to submit to 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 from the Ontario Correctional Institute which closed down after a major outbreak last year. As of 2019, the jail employed 440 correctional officers. The local represented 1,078 members from Maplehurst and the neighbouring women’s jail.
“The focus of this isn’t about who is vaccinated and who isn’t, the focus of this is these individuals were in compliance with an OPS mandate and they were punished for it,” Figliola said an in an interview. The public health order does not stipulate that unvaccinated staff should be placed on unpaid leave.
Figliola said staff who are able to work at the jail are doing their best and working 12 to 14 hours days and through breaks in order to keep the facility operating, as other staff members are facing an unknown amount of time without pay.
“I feel like we are being used as a test run to see what the reaction is for the rest of the province,” he said. He noted that proof of vaccination or testing is not a requirement for visitors to provincial jails and said the union had been asking for this to be addressed for weeks.
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