“To ensure the safety of long-term care residents, these workers are subject to ‘active screening’ direction set out in a directive by the Chief Medical Officer of Health, which requires a rigorous screening process before being permitted entry into a long-term care home,” the statement said.
Even for directly-hired personal support workers, poor pay has long meant juggling multiple jobs at different homes, says Sharlene Stewart, president of Services Employees International Union Healthcare.
“Workers absolutely want one full-time job. But when you pay them so poorly … you have to work two jobs to barely make a living,” she said.
In light of the pandemic, the government has said these workers can pick one employer and take job-protected leaves of absence from others to comply with new directives.The province has also said it “encourages” long-term-care employers to offer full-time hours to part-time workers.
That is what has happened at Jimenez’s facility so far, she says. But it does not solve what caused the shortages — and reliance on temporary staff — in the first place.
“It was stressful working short. Even when people came in, they weren’t wanting to get hired at our place because they thought the wage was too low,” she said.
Years of underfunding and the expansion of for-profit care homes have deeply impacted working conditions, leading to poor pay, high turnover, and the need for a contingent workforce to plug the gaps, says Pat Armstrong, sociology professor at York University.
“If you’re trying to make profit out of a long-term care home, your biggest cost is labour.”
Armstrong is part of an interdisciplinary team that has studied nursing homes in Canada and five other jurisdictions over the past decade. A forthcoming report on their findings for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that “homes run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing levels, more verified complaints, and more transfers to hospitals, as well as higher rates for both ulcers and morbidity.”
“Moreover, managerial practices taken from the business sector are designed for just enough labour and for making a profit, rather than for providing good care,” the report says.
“These include paying the lowest wages possible, and hiring part-time, casual and those defined as self-employed in order to avoid paying benefits or providing other protections.”
Enter staffing agencies.
“PSWs have double the rate of absenteeism due to illness or injury compared to the (Canadian) average,” said Kate Laxer, a research associate with Dr. Tamara Daly at York University’s
Centre for Aging Research and Education.
“If you even were to imagine that just one PSW is sick, and they’re dealing with perhaps a ratio of three PSWs to 20 residents, that would have a very serious consequence in the overall ratio,” she added.
“That would require an agency staff person to fill in at that point. And it’s very common. It happens all the time.”
