Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Salty Stewards

These are the people who make CLAC work and preserve the fundamental values of dignity, fairness, and respect in the workplace

By Ken Dam, Representative

Ruby (name changed) was a salty steward. She was a dietary aide in a long term care home.

Working in the kitchen is particularly challenging. Cramped conditions, close proximity with coworkers, and not a spare moment throughout your shift. Expectations are high, and so are tensions.

Ruby had been meeting with the executive director informally on a regular basis talking about morale and how to improve the working conditions. She highlighted areas of communication breakdowns between supervisors and staff.

Ruby had dedicated her free time to trying to build respect between the parties, to work as a team together, to get everyone pulling in the same direction. It had taken time and effort to build this trust. And slowly things were turning around.

The work was still hard, but at least staff felt heard, and issues were slowly being addressed.

But within a span of a few weeks, the executive director left for a new position, and the direct kitchen supervisor went off on an 18-month maternity leave. An interim executive director was assigned to the home for two days per week, while also managing another long term care home. The kitchen supervisor position was left vacant.

Very quickly, all the progress Ruby had made evaporated. There was no one from the management team with the time, resources, or ability to address any ongoing issues in the kitchen—or in any other department for that matter.

Morale plummeted. Some staff left for greener pastures. And Ruby was left feeling disheartened, tired, and uncertain whether she had the energy to keep pushing, to keep advocating.

But she did. And not for the first time.

In her 20 years at the home, Ruby has had to do this numerous times. She put her head down, and went to work, building new relationships and doing what she could to preserve the progress that had been made.

As I said, Ruby was a salty steward. Not salty in her personality but salty in her preserving work.

Through changes and upheavals in the workplace, she acted as a preservative, working to preserve the dignity of her coworkers and the dignity of the work itself. In many ways, she kept her department from completely spoiling.

Ruby’s story is extremely common in healthcare. All across Ontario, CLAC stewards are doing the same thing as Ruby: being salt in their workplaces.

In my 18 years working as representative in Ontario healthcare, I have had the pleasure of working with a lot of different stewards. I thought back to all the bargaining units that I have represented over the years and all the different people that were elected as stewards in their workplace and with whom I worked directly.

I couldn’t believe it. I calculated I had worked with over 100 different stewards! And nearly all of them could tell similar stories.

As I personally transition out of my role as a CLAC representative and toward a new career, I want to dedicate this short segment to all the stewards that I have worked with. These are workers who at one time answered the call to serve their workplaces to advocate for their fellow coworkers. They gave their time and energy to try and make their workplaces better.

These are the people who make CLAC work. They preserve the fundamental values of CLAC: dignity, fairness, and respect.

So, I raise a literary toast to all these CLAC stewards. Keep being salty, my friends.

Salty Stewards

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