Friday, December 3, 2021

Are We There Yet?

Wages for front-line workers in long term care have stagnated for years. The pandemic spurred governments to make some temporary improvements. Now, it’s time to make them permanent

By Ian DeWaard, Ontario Director

It’s an anthem well known by every parent who’s embarked on a journey with kids in the back seat. It doesn’t really matter how long the ride, the chorus, “Are we there yet?” generally appears somewhere during the final third of the journey and signals that anticipation has been overcome by exhaustion.

Ontario’s healthcare workers, CLAC, and other unions have been increasingly and more loudly asking this question of the provincial government in respect of the promised—and long overdue—wage adjustments for front-line workers.

In spring 2020, as the pandemic exploded in long term care, elected officials across the country began stating publicly that our front-line heroes were underpaid, and they committed to doing something about it. In Ontario, the language from our premier has been strong and unequivocal. But a permanent solution has yet to arrive.

In April 2020, the Ontario government introduced a 16-week $4 per hour wage enhancement to most front-line workers, including those in nongovernment funded, private-sector retirement homes. Other provinces, like BC and Quebec, undertook their own temporary wage enhancements.

In October 2020, a second enhancement came for Ontario workers, this time in the range of $2 to $3 per hour—but only for personal support workers (PSWs). This temporary adjustment has been extended several times since.

For critics who think that union advocacy on this issue is simple and crass opportunism, it’s important to point out that for 10 of the last 12 years, these front-line workers have been subjected to legislated wage freezes and caps that kept wage growth below inflationary levels.

As the world has now seen, this wage suppression was taking place while care needs and resident populations grew, but the workforce didn’t. In short, the work kept getting harder while wages and workforce numbers stagnated.

In 2014, the government of the day made adjustments to workers in homecare only. But even now, some homecare PSWs still make barely over minimum wage while doing work that is deemed “nondirect care.”

The pandemic has brought the crisis to a head, and as a result, it’s become painfully evident that the prepandemic staffing shortage left the system dangerously exposed.

During the last year, front-line care workers have been asked to do the impossible, while gowned, goggled, and masked.

Often, they were lauded. But just as often, they were being pilloried for the conditions and the state of care in their facilities, all the while being the only human contact that residents had access to for more than a year.

Their workforce, already struggling with high turnover and understaffing before the pandemic, was further decimated by the loss of those who had to elect to work at one workplace only, as well as those who’d just lost the capacity to carry on in these conditions. Collective agreements were suspended by emergency orders, and work schedules and predictability completely upended.

Over the last year, Ontario’s government has committed major resources to the problem in long term care and homecare, including 15,000 new long term care beds and a standard level of care of four hours per resident per day, which represents a 45 percent increase in direct care. These are seismic shifts.

But the province estimates that these commitments will create 37,000 new jobs. Coupled with high turnover and an aging workforce, the number of new staff needed to enter this sector will be significantly higher than that.

CLAC and its members have been clear that there needs to be three areas of focus to create an environment of dignified care and dignified work:

Capacity (new and updated beds)
Increased staffing hours for hands-on care
Competitive wages and remuneration to attract and retain qualified workers

The province has delivered significant investment to those first two elements but has yet to address the third. It’s promised to bring that solution to its agenda, but after 12 years of wage suppression, and a disastrous 21 months of pandemic work conditions, its time to ask again, are we there yet?

Are We There Yet?

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