While Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman's announcement that the provincial government is investing $117.8 million to improve home care and community support services is welcome news, the Ontario government has failed to tackle the real problems in Ontario's home care sector, says the Service Employees International Union Local 1.on, the largest home care union in the province.
"Home care workers will welcome a pay increase. However, the increase does not address the wide wage disparity between home care workers, such as personal support workers working in homecare and those working in institutional settings such as hospitals and nursing homes," said Sharleen Stewart, president of SEIU Local 1.on.
Elinor Caplan in her report admitted that the wage disparity between home care and institutional sectors was a factor in recruitment of home care workers.
Caplan recommended that CCACs not be required to provide 100 per cent PSW status within the Request for Proposals process. This will further reduce the quality of care a home care agency must deliver.
Home care workers still will not have the employment rights every other worker in Ontario enjoys. They will remain "elect to work" workers, meaning they can not exercise any successor rights when a home care agency loses its service contract to another agency.
In her report, Caplan admitted that to remove the elect to work model would cost $62 million.
"The Ontario government is content to have workers and home care clients carry the financial burden that is the direct result of the competitive bidding model. It must be scrapped," Stewart said.
It will be years before any real changes to human resource practices can occur, because no current home care agency contract with a CCAC can be reviewed until it expires.
The Ontario government still has not established any provincial standards for the delivery of home care services. The services a client receives in Windsor must also apply to a client in Cornwall or Kenora, but this is currently not the case.
"The competitive bidding model in Ontario's home care sector has failed workers, clients and Ontario's taxpayers," Stewart says.
The competitive bidding model has allowed for profit providers to capture over 50 per cent of all home care services in Ontario.
"For profit home care operators will continue to reap profits from Ontario's health care system, but there has been no increase in the number of care hours home care clients can receive," said Stewart. The amount of care hours an individual home care client is entitled to has been frozen since 1999.