SUDBURY – A five-month long lockout between Sudbury CarePartners and administrative staff has ended with permanent job losses.

CarePartners has decided to shut down its operation in Sudbury and eliminate the 29 unionized jobs, that include home care coordinators and administrative workers, as well as some non-union jobs.

Severance packages have been negotiated for the workers affected, who are members of United Steelworkers Local 2020. They are the ones that would do the scheduling for the company's local personal support workers (PSW). The PSWs at CarePartners were not part of the labour dispute.

In a statement, the Ontario Director of the United Steelworkers, Marty Warren, says:

"The employees demonstrated why issues such as low wages, sick leave, and staff turnover were significant problems that affect workers, as well as the services delivered to patients. Rather than addressing these issues with its employees, CarePartners decided to take these jobs out of the community, presumably to a low-wage, non-union environment where it can impose its will on workers."

Meanwhile, local NDP MPPs Jamie West and France Gélinas also responded to the news saying:

"The Ford government largely funds CarePartners, but did nothing to urge management to get back to the bargaining table. They looked away while a large company reaped big profits from our public health care system and locked out hard-working workers to protect those profits over patients and working people."

CarePartners provides home care services such as personal support workers, rehabilitation, and nursing across the province. In Sudbury, it is contracted by the North East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN).

Officials from the North East LHIN provided this statement to CTV News:

"CarePartners has a contract with the North East LHIN to deliver personal support services in Sudbury and other parts of the North East. Our focus is ensuring our clients receive the personal support services they need to transition home from hospital and/or remain at home. The North East LHIN has received assurances from CarePartners that clients will continue to receive personal support services despite this change in schedulers’ staffing. We are continuing to work with CarePartners to ensure quality delivery of care for clients."