Care workers have our backs — and we must have theirs

Let’s start by paying them decently, Corrie Scott says.

This week, my family’s worst fears came true. We learned that there are 37 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at my father-in-law’s non-profit long-term care home.

What’s worse, due to staffing shortages, residents continued to eat together in the dining room, despite the risk of infection, because otherwise there was not enough staff to ensure that residents ate at all.

This news was absolutely devastating for our family. Recent news stories about atrocious conditions at care homes around the country send shivers down our spine.

But COVID-19 is not the only concern right now. Care homes have struggled to find enough staff to keep residents safe. The director of my father-in-law’s home reportedly telephoned 1,000 former health-care interns asking for their help. Amal Tahlil was one of only 14 who agreed to take up the job and one of only seven who showed up for work.

We were deeply moved by Amal Tahlil’s story. She and others are putting their own health and safety on the line to help people like my fatherin-law. She is a real-life super hero. But that is not why I’m writing this.

Amal clearly has our back. But do we have hers?

Almost all long-term care workers make less than a living wage. A living wage is what people need to earn to cover the basic costs of living in their community. People who don’t make a living wage face impossible choices. Do I feed the children or pay the rent? Despite doing essential work, employees in long-term care homes often live on the brink of poverty.

And staffing at Ontario’s long-term care homes has long been in crisis. In November, the Doug Ford government passed Bill 124, which caps wage increases in the public sector to one per cent per year. When you consider that Ontario’s inflation rate last year was 2.1 per cent, this amounts to a pay cut in a sector

We have to provide and care for our families and we cannot do it when we are living as poor class citizens.

that is already severely underpaid. Lisa Levin, CEO of Advant Age Ontario, an association that represents non-profit homes, said this wage freeze made it “harder for non-profit homes to be attractive to staff.”

In a powerful pre-COVID-19 open letter to the Ford government, Tanya Fray, a non-profit home worker, spoke out against the Ford government cuts. “We have to provide and care for our families and we cannot do it when we are living as poor class citizens,” Fray wrote.

What’s more, Robyn Maynard and Andrea J. Richie describe how essential workers, including care workers, are disproportionately poor black and brown women who have no choice but to be in public spaces as they travel to work sustaining the social isolation and health of often white middle-class families.

“This recreates a long-standing historical injustice that dates back to slavery: the expectation that Black women care for others while being denied the ability to care for themselves and one another.”

The inequality that Maynard and Richie refer to is on full display in Canada’s response to COVID-19. For example, the desperate lack of staff has led Quebec to pay surgeons $211 an hour if they are willing to help out in care homes. The average wage of an orderly now is $21.50 an hour.

Why are we so quick to overpay doctors to do the same work as care workers who we continue to severely underpay?

Is it because care home workers are mostly women of colour?

The urgent first step to correcting these profound inequalities is to immediately increase wages, benefits and pensions for all long-term care workers, including cleaners, food preparation workers and personal support workers. You can’t ask people to risk their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, for wages that barely allow them to pay their bills.

Rather than cards or banners, if we want to thank care workers for their dedication, we must insist that they be paid properly. Now.

Amal Tahlil is looking after our family. Why aren’t we looking after hers?

Corrie Scott is associate professor, Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, University of Ottawa.