I am a concerned Canadian citizen with NO personal skin in the healthcare game, meaning I am not a medical professional nor am I related to anyone who currently requires long term care (LTC) or hospitalization. I simply see what is happening and recognize that things need to change.

Human lives are at stake. As part-time PSWs, nurses and other medical professionals have to maintain employment at multiple facilities in order to make full-time wages, the health of their patients and your loved ones is compromised. This is because illness can easily be spread between organizations.

Right now, in Canada, there is a call for medical professionals to choose to work at only one long term care facility. According to the Government of Canada website, under the heading Infection Prevention and Control Preparedness, LTC homes are responsible for:

• Review of scheduling and restriction of staff work assignments to specific units or areas wherever feasible and safe, to limit potential spread within facilities, even before COVID-19 is detected in a LTCH
• Identifying staff who work in more than one location (e.g., other LTCHs or health care settings), and ensuring efforts are made to prevent this where possible, to limit spread between facilities and to inform investigations during an outbreak[i]

This recommendation makes sense. There is no question. However, it is blatantly unfair to employees when an employer can and does dictate how many hours a worker is permitted to work. These professional employees work at more than one facility because they have to, not because they choose to. The federal or provincial governments must pass legislation to force employers to provide staff with full-time employment. Full Stop! 

According to an article in BioMed Central by Zeytinoglu et al.,“Many organizations in home and community care in Ontario, Canada hire PSWs as needed and their work hours are not guaranteed.”[ii]

One Ontario PSW, who I will call Jane Doe, noted that her current scheduled hours are capped by her employer at 7 shifts every 2 weeks (or 28 hours per week). In Canada, “Full-time employment is defined as work of 30 hours or more per week; part-time employment is work of less than 30 hours per week.”[iii] Up until the recent outbreak Jane would pick up additional shifts whenever possible, often in other “houses” of her employer. And even though she would regularly work more than 30 hours on average she was still not considered a full-time employee, nor was she provided with the benefits of a full-time employee. Currently, she is only allowed to work in her own “house” so even if she wants to pick up additional shifts opportunities will be limited. As of the time of this writing, Canadian governments are making new forms of compensation available to those facing the plight of Jane. However, they are temporary. If this crisis has shown us anything it is that essential workers are essential. Period.

Essential workers deserve our respect, they deserve better treatment by their employers and they deserve full-time employment and the benefits that go along with it.

Not only would government legislation improve the plight of the non-full-time healthcare worker, arguably, the lives of LTC residents would also be improved. If only because residents would be cared for by a more consistent group of individuals. According to Jason Deneault of Unifor (1106), “Every single LTCH receives funding from the government.”[iv] This means that facilities, both public and private, receive tax payer dollars for each resident. Presumably, the intention of this money is to meet the needs of residents, not to increase profits. The needs of residents must include adequate, fairly compensated, consistent full-time staff.

It should not take a crisis like Covid-19 to make the public aware of the dangers of caregivers working in multiple facilities. Yet here we are. If enough people lobby for a change, together we can make it happen. LTC and other health care facilities must be forced, through government intervention, to employ full-time essential workers.

Be a part of the solution. Sign this petition. Put pressure on Canadian politicians to force employers to provide full-time work to essential healthcare workers. 

[i] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/prevent-control-covid-19-long-term-care-homes.html#a3

[ii] Zeytinoglu, I.U., Denton, M., Brookman, C. et al. Health and safety matters! Associations between organizational practices and personal support workers’ life and work stress in Ontario, Canada. BMC Health Serv Res 17, 427 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2355-4

[iii] http://www.ccsd.ca/factsheets/labour_market/employment/index.htm

[iv] Jason Deneault, Financial Secretary, Unifor (1106)