TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Ford government’s plan to permanently employ lower-trained workers to replace PSWs caring for increasingly vulnerable long-term care residents is fraught with risk, says the Canadian Union of Public Employees. The union is instead calling for a robust health care human resources strategy to recruit the tens of thousands of personal support workers required in the sector.
The government has proposed an amendment to a regulation (246/22) under the Fixing Long Term Care Act, which will make permanent the temporary changes brought in during the peak of the pandemic. Back in 2020, the government had temporarily allowed homes to replace personal support workers with resident support aides to provide care to residents with less complex needs, and promised they won’t be replacing PSWs.
“Long-term care residents are increasingly frail and vulnerable, with very complex needs. Their care must be delivered by a highly skilled team of staff,” says Michael Hurley, president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE). “Permanently substituting personal support workers with staff who have less training will be harmful to residents and will worsen the staffing crisis.”
Hurley pointed to the fact that 81 per cent of long-term care residents have some level of cognitive impairment. Citing research on alarming levels of violence in long-term care, Hurley said the predominance of dementia, complex mental illnesses, and neurological disorders makes residents prone to responsive or aggressive behaviour, which requires provision of care by highly-trained staff for the safety of residents and workers alike.
Charlene Van Dyke, a hospital environmental service worker and vice chair of CUPE’s health care workers committee, said that the use of resident support aides must not be anything more than a stop-gap measure until the PSW staffing crisis has abated.
“We need a three-step staffing plan: train a new generation of PSWs, improve compensation to stop the bleeding of PSWs, and provide training for the existing resident support aides to upgrade their qualifications and become PSWs,” she said.
“This government staffing plan is completely inadequate, which is why we are seeing the high attrition rate among PSWs. The people who perform this work, who are predominately women, are exhausted due to heavy workloads and they are exhausted due to the predominance of part-time work and low wages. How will permanently replacing them with lower-trained and lower-paid workers help in any way? It’s a hare-brained idea. And one has to question if the motivation here is driven by lowering costs for the profit-seeking employers in the sector that have close ties to the Ontario PCs.”
Pam Heyer has worked as a PSW in the Peel Region since 2004. She says the PC government must develop a plan to increase wages and take steps to create better working conditions to keep PSWs in long-term care.
“PSWs need higher wages and better working conditions if we want to address the staffing crisis, and we need them now. We deserve to be compensated fairly and respectfully for the incredibly hard work we do every day. So many of us are struggling to get by, to pay our bills, to buy food. So many of us are working two or three jobs to make ends meet,” Heyer said.
About CUPE in long-term care
The Canadian Union of Public Employees represents about 35,000 long-term care workers in Ontario, including registered practical nurses, personal support workers, housekeepers, dietary aides, food service workers, and resident support aides.
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