Another disgruntled young doctor

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2015 (3381 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The University of Manitoba has another disgruntled young doctor.

We told you recently about another doctor who’s sued U of M, alleging widespread human rights abuses centred around his inability to get a residency to his liking. That’s his father who’s been conducting a hunger strike on Route 90. The ‘evidence’ the doctor and his family and the family friend who’s acted as an aggressive go-between provided had seemed to indicate that the medical faculty’s ongoing academic evaluation of the young man’s performance and of his interpersonal skills had not been to his family’s satisfaction.

Now comes a second young doctor, who included an amazing six-page CV of his medical and academic achievements to date in his email to me so that, as he put it, “Just so I can prove that I am not a looney.”

The young doctor has a science degree, a master’s, and a medical degree from U of M, and says that he put himself through school by working on campus as a part-time security guard.

The university, the doctor alleges, owes him $12,000 in severance pay. He says the university is refusing to pay on the basis that it reorganized the security service so that it could cut his hours to zero, without laying him off and without paying him the severance he believes he deserves.

The doctor said that it will end up costing U of M at least 10 times the $12,000, and while he talks about his situation going to court, it is not clear what he intends to do. The doctor said that he and his wife both want their names expunged from the records of the alumni association and have no intention of supporting the university while the current leadership is in place. And in an accusation I don’t hear every day, the doctor said that his former union is colluding with U of M to prevent his receiving compensation he deserves.

For its part, UM gave me the standard answer that it cannot discuss any individual personel. However, UM did tell me that University Centre until recently had its own security staff, who were all part-time, and that the rest of the campus was under one security services department whose staff were all full-time.

University Centre got rolled into the university-wide security services, which would sound a sensible thing to do, and UM says that it offered the part-time employees jobs on a full-time basis. Some people accepted, some did not.

And there it stands.