Thursday, February 25, 2021

10,000 Reasons

The Ontario government must do more for the men and women working in the retirement home sector

By Kevin Gates, Representative

Since the global pandemic was declared in March 2020, over 1,000 retirement home workers have contracted COVID-19 from the workplace according to publicly available data.

Unfortunately, that fact in and of itself is not unique because thousands more healthcare workers in hospitals, long term care facilities, and those working in homecare settings have also contracted COVID-19 from their workplace.

Shockingly, it is only retirement home workers who do not have guaranteed access to occupational illness insurance coverage.

It is a little-known fact that the retirement home sector is exempt from mandatory participation in WSIB. To date, the government has bowed to the powerful lobbying efforts of large retirement home operators and has resisted calls to expand WSIB to include retirement home workers.

Without mandatory participation, the profit motivation of these large retirement home operators has led them to purchase cheaper insurance plans for their workers that does not include occupational illness protection.

The time has come to end this two-tier system of workplace protection for essential healthcare workers. Every healthcare worker in Ontario is putting their safety at risk when they report to work to care for those in need.

But it is only retirement home workers who have to worry about the lack of occupational illness protection and wonder what will happen if they become seriously ill from COVID-19 as a result of reporting to work.

CLAC actively lobbied the government to mandate WSIB protection (clac.ca/wsibforall) for retirement home employees to ensure that every healthcare employee is afforded with the same level of occupational illness protection during this global pandemic. With the advent of new, more contagious strains, and delays in the delivery of vaccines, this issue has become all the more urgent.

In addition to lobbying the government, you should know that CLAC has taken a very aggressive position in bargaining with respect to WSIB coverage. At the bargaining table, your CLAC negotiators are demanding that employers enshrine occupational illness protection in collective agreements.

This may cause delay in the bargaining process, but we believe that it is worth the fight.

Retirement homes are a vital component in the care of our seniors. It is time that the government recognize the importance of retirement home employees as a vital and equal part of the healthcare continuum by ending the two-tier worker protection.

CLAC is calling on the government to mandate WSIB coverage for all retirement home employees without any further delay—before there are 1,000 more reasons for them to take this issue seriously.

10,000 Reasons

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