On the brink: care workers in Canada struggle to end pandemic

OTTAWA / TORONTO (Reuters) – Halima has been supporting herself and her three children for 15 years by caring for long hours with elderly clients in nursing homes or in their personal homes in Toronto.

But when COVID-19 infections increased last year, Halima’s hours were reduced because caregivers in Ontario could only work in one facility, and suddenly she could not afford the monthly rent of $ 1,800 ($ 1,407) on her apartment. not.

Halima, who asked to identify only by her first name, managed to keep a roof over her head by cutting groceries. As a part-time worker, she has no benefits and no paid sick days.

‘Food and rent, everything is very expensive. It’s hard to live now, ‘Halima said in an interview.

Canada is struggling to tame a second wave of COVID-19 and stop the spread of new variants. Elderly people carried the bulk of the pandemic: 70% of Canada’s more than 20,000 deaths COVID-19 were in long-term care homes.

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) have long struggled with housing insecurity in expensive Canadian cities, but the pandemic has exacerbated the situation for many, driving some homeless and shattering others, according to workers, shelter administrators, union officials and health officials. lawyers.

The core of their struggle is low wages and fewer hours amid pandemic constraints that do not allow them to work at multiple care facilities. The problem is worst among part-time workers at for-profit nursing homes.

In populous Ontario, most PSWs are women and about 60% work in non-profit care homes, many in high-turnover part-time jobs, according to a recent report by the Canadian Women’s Foundation.

Some are paid close to the minimum wage, which means that even with full-time hours, they barely earn enough to lower the poverty level for a single person without dependents. A recent survey found that 67% of PSWs now earn less home pay than before the pandemic.

Even full-time care workers earning the average wage in Ontario will not have the poverty for a family of four in Toronto.

“I suspect people who were one to two salaried employees away from homelessness … now do not have the isolation,” said Naheed Dosani, a doctor and health justice activist in Toronto.

Dosani added that the ‘broken’ system that pushes front-line workers, including essential health workers, to homelessness is also a health risk in the community, as workers can transport COVID-19 from nursing homes to shelters and back.

Indeed, an outbreak in a shelter in Ottawa last year has its origins in two women who had long-term jobs but lived in the shelter.

“They just can not earn enough money to afford the rental conditions of Ottawa,” said Dr. Jeff Turnbull, medical director of Ottawa Inner City Health, told a commission investigating COVID-19 in Ontario nursing homes in late December.

“And so they brought COVID from a long-term care facility to the shelters where we had an outbreak,” Turnbull said.

There are no official statistics on PSWs living in shelters and other emergency housing, although frontline staff in Ottawa and Toronto have told Reuters it is a growing problem.

Executive Director Sarah Davis said Cornerstone Housing for Women in Ottawa is 47.5% higher than the pre-pandemic. The organization now serves about 200 women a day and about 5% of them are frontline workers, including PSWs.

“Women are trying to save money and (living in shelters) is one of the only options they can have,” Davis said.

Cornerstone and three other shelters in Ottawa stopped taking new customers this week due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

In British Columbia, the province has introduced pandemic wage supplements of up to C $ 7 per hour and guaranteed hours. Ontario, Alberta and others did not protect hours, resulting in fewer jobs and less income for many workers, unions say.

The situation is particularly dire in Ontario, where rents are high and where many profitable care homes prefer to keep workers on part-time contracts rather than accept the cost of full-time staff.

‘In some of these houses, 70% of the workers are part-time. Why do they want them part-time? Because they do not have to pay for sickness and benefits, ”said Katha Fortier, a senior official at Unifor, the largest private-sector union.

Low wages and the precarious nature of PSW work are not unique to Canada. Most long-term care workers in OECD countries are women and a large proportion are part-time, according to an OECD article from 2019. A significant number have multiple jobs to get by.

Yet Canada spends less than the OECD average on long-term care as a percentage of GDP: 1.3% compared to 1.7%, according to OECD data.

In Vancouver, Canada’s most expensive housing market, Agnes Pecson lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her husband, adult daughter and teenage son.

Pre-pandemic, Pecson worked 55 hours a week between two works. Now she’s working full time on one, and even with BC’s wage supplement, she’s barely getting by.

“We just live salary to salary,” Pecson said.

($ 1 = 1.2727 Canadian dollars)