While the
Ontario government cuts hospitals and downloads care onto the community, and
Community Care Access Centre CEOs give themselves hefty pay hikes, both have
forced frontline health workers onto cold picket lines to fight a wage freeze.
Cutting and privatizing healthcare
For years the
Ontario Liberals have cut healthcare and closed hospitals, including five
planned hospital closures in Niagara. According to the Ontario
Health Coalition, “For
the last seven consecutive Ontario budgets, public hospitals have faced real
dollar cuts to global budgets. Ontario now funds its hospitals at among the
lowest rates in Canada.”
Health
professionals who work at Community Care Access Centres (CCACs)—including
registered nurses and nurse practioners, physiotherapists, occupational,
respiratory and speech therapists, and social workers—provide essential care to
patients recently discharged from hospital, those with chronic health problems,
and those with end of life care. Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) president
Linda Haslam-Stroud’s own parents depend on CCAC workers, and as she said, “It
was only because of these care co-ordinators (that they could live at home).”
These services
should allow people the flexibility and independence to access care from home,
but governments are cynically using home care to justify cuts and privatization. As Natalie Mehra from the Ontario
Health Coalition explained, “The story from the Ministry of
Health has been that the cuts to hospital care and the downloading of ever more
acute and complex hospital patients is not a cut—it is ‘transformation.’ This
is utter nonsense. Not only is it a cut. It is the systematic dismantling of
vital hospital services that are never replaced in home care. And it is the
privatization of vital hospital services to private clinics that undermine
single-tier Medicare.”
CCACs show what happens when you privatize healthcare. As
Bob Hepburn outlined in the Toronto Star
a year ago, “First,
executive salaries at Community Care Access Centres, which govern home care in
Ontario, have skyrocketed while low-paid workers who actually deliver services
to patients haven’t seen their incomes rise in a decade — and in many cases
have actually suffered significant drops. Second, the 14 CCACs are now using tax dollars meant for
patient care to pay for lobbying firms that advise the CCACs on how to ‘sell’
their message to politicians at Queen’s Park. Third, barely 40 to 50 cents of
every tax dollar earmarked for home care actually reaches the health-care
professionals who deliver services to patients. Stunningly, the rest goes to
executive salaries, rent, administrative costs, care coordination and corporate
profits. Fourth, a reign of fear and intimidation imposed by CCAC bureaucrats
has effectively shut up critics of the system, especially those employed by
private companies that have contracts with CCACs to provide the workers who
actually deliver services to patients.”
Downloading
services into the home also transfers care to unpaid domestic labour,
disproportionately affecting women. Now the CEOs who awarded themselves massive
pay hikes are trying to impose yet another pay freeze on home care workers—also
disproportionately women—while the Liberal government turns their back on
patients.
Braving the cold against a wage freeze
But 3,000
members of the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) have gone on strike at 9 of 14
CCACs across the province. After a two year pay freeze, all they are asking for
is a 1.4% increase—the same as that received by the 57,000 registered nurses
working in hospitals, long-term care and public health.
While home care workers
are braving the cold against a wage freeze, the CEOs are basking in the
sun—like Richard Joly, CEO of the North East CCAC, who gave himself a 48% pay
hike (from $176,000 to $260,000), and according to ONA is currently on vacation
in Mexico. As Haslam-Stroud said, "While we
are there for you in your homes, schools and communities, the CEOs are
continuing to award themselves hefty increases, in most cases, and jetting off
to Mexico during a crisis in home care. The public should be angry and this
government should be taking action."
Scabs don’t heal
Instead of
respecting home care workers and paying them a fair raise, CCACs are putting
patients at risk by using untrained replacement workers. As Haslam-Stroud explained,
"Information has been received from inside the South West CCAC that
accounting staff and HR are doing this work. It is totally inappropriate for
our patients to have their wounds assessed by accounting and HR staff. The
referrals for registered nurses to assess wounds should come from a doctor, the
family members of home patients and long-term care facilities. The Ontario Ministry
of Health and Long-Term Care should be taking immediate steps to address this
unacceptable practice and get back to the negotiating table with a reasonable
offer for our essential nurses and health care providers."
Meanwhile the
Liberal government—who created this crisis in the first place by cutting
hospitals and encouraging privatization—is pretending nothing’s wrong. Ontario
Health Minister Eric Hoskins claimed that “CCACs
have developed contingency plans and are working with all of their partners to
ensure patients continue to receive the care they need." The mainstream
media are dutifully playing along, with headline like “Ontario health workers strike could cause
hospital backlogs,”
blaming the chronic hospital backlog created by government cuts on a few days
of home care workers fighting back.
Patients above profits
We need to
support home care workers as part of putting patients above profits. We need to
reverse hospital cuts that are downloading services, and where there is a need
for homecare it shouldn’t be contracted out to for-profit corporations but
provided by nurses and personal support workers—who are well paid for the vital services they
provide. As Margaret Marcotte, a labour relations officer for ONA in Windsor, said
on the picket line, “My appeal is this: call the CEOs of
your CCAC, call your MPPs, call your local LHINs and demand they get back to
the table and negotiate a fair deal.”
