PANDEMIC TAKING ITS TOLL
Low-income workers hit hard
COVID -19 has wreaked financial hardship across British Columbia, but some residents have struggled more than others to weather the storm: those who were already poor before the pandemic arrived.
Businesses have closed and 400,000 jobs have been lost. Transit was cut back, making transportation very tricky for those who don’t have a car. It’s difficult for students to participate in home school when their family has no computers or internet access.
Food insecurity is at an all-time high, as many vulnerable kids can no longer get meals at school and grocery money is hijacked to pay the rent. And B.C.’S low-income earners are often required to show up each day for their essential-service jobs. Many cannot work from home, and therefore may have increased exposure to the virus.
These crucial jobs — grocery store clerks, social housing staff, care home aides, educational assistants, cleaners — often go unnoticed and, many would argue, are undervalued.
Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged many of these workers, noting they had “very low wages while doing extraordinarily important work.” He announced the federal government and provinces will spend $4 billion to increase the pay of essential workers who make close to minimum wage.
Various governments have stepped up to help Canadians during this pandemic. Ottawa launched a variety of relief efforts, including a $2,000-a-month Canada Emergency Response Benefit for people who have lost jobs, a wage-subsidy program to help employers, and relief payments for students who lost summer gigs.
B.C. has also introduced measures, such as an additional $1,000 a month for people already collecting the federal response benefit, temporary help with rent, and ensuring long-term care wages are equalized across facilities.
But not all low-income earners qualify for the programs.
In our 2017 Working Poor series, Postmedia reported that B.C. had the highest rate of working poor in the country. Of Canada’s largest cities, Vancouver was second worst with more than 100,000 low-income earners, or nearly one in 10 of the working-age population.
Earlier this year, First Call’s annual child poverty report card found that one out of every five B.C. children lives in poverty.
Today, we introduce you to some unsung COVID-19 heroes, who have proudly continued to perform their jobs during this pandemic, despite earning below B.C.’S average hourly wage. And we visit some organizations helping to feed, house and protect these important citizens, and who are lobbying for change.
WHEN TWO FULL-TIME JOBS ARE NOT ENOUGH
Hessed Torres works two fulltime jobs, one from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the other from 4 p.m. to midnight, as a support worker in two Downtown Eastside social housing buildings for women and children.
“Living with one paycheque? Maybe if I was single, maybe if I was young that would work. But I have too many responsibilities, so it just doesn’t work with one paycheque. I’m always short,” said Torres, who we profiled in our Working Poor series in 2017.
According to Statistics Canada, B.C.’S average hourly wage in 2019 for full-time work was $29.34, and Hessed makes below that at both her jobs. She spends $900 on rent for her basement apartment, and sends about $700 to the Philippines each month, where her mother is raising her nine-year-old daughter (whom she has applied to bring to Canada).
She does not qualify for any government aid programs.
After five hours of sleep each night, she struggles to get out bed in the morning when her alarm sounds.
“I just push myself to do it,” she says. “I don’t want my pay to get cut for missing a day or two. So I power through.”
This was a grind before COVID-19, but has been financially and psychologically more tasking since.
Torres, 34, can’t get sick because she can’t afford to lose any pay, so she’s been avoiding public spaces like city buses and food stores. Instead, she’s spent extra money on taxis and Ubers, and has been ordering fast food.
“I don’t think I should really be going to the grocery because it is where everyone goes these days. So I end up eating really bad food.”
She works with women and children who live together in supported housing, where best efforts are made to maintain social distancing, although that is not always possible.
“It definitely makes me feel nervous in that I have to go out and still face people, although we do have protocols in place. Still, sometimes you can’t really avoid closing that distance,” she said. “When a woman falls out of her bed, you can’t just not respond to that. You have to go to her unit and help her. Or an overdose. It’s hard.”
She likes the work, and is grateful to still be collecting two paycheques when so many people have none. She hopes, though, to raise awareness about some of the other hard-working people on the front lines of this pandemic.
“I don’t think people are really understanding how many of us are still working. And it’s not just the health workers that are going to work, but it’s other essential services, like us.”
‘A CRAZY HAMSTER WHEEL WE ARE ALL RUNNING ON’
Katrina Charlton worked seven days a week before COVID-19 forced the White Rock restaurant where she was a waitress to close down on March 16, evaporating one-third of her income. So, for the last two months, she’s had only one job: as an educational assistant for the Surrey school board, where she makes decent pay, just below the B.C. average hourly rate of $29, but can get only part-time employment 10 months of the year.
“The difference now is it is really hard to try to put any money away for the summer months when I’m not working at school. … I feel like the summer months and September and October are going to be really hard,” said Charlton, who was also profiled in the Working Poor series.
“I still feel lucky compared to the poor people working in the grocery stores because they make even less.”
A survey last fall by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found nearly one-third of B.C. workers aged 25 to 65 had worked more than one job in the past three months. “The pandemic is shining a light on the deep inequalities that already existed in our economy and left some people across B.C. much more exposed to risk and less prepared to weather the crisis than others,” the centre’s Iglika Ivanova said last week.
In April, a relative helped Charlton pay her $1,200 rent; now she receives $300 a month from the temporary provincial rent-subsidy program. But because of her parttime school job, she doesn’t qualify for the federal government’s response benefit or the provincial $1,000 aid.
“Financially I’ve been very frugal, extremely frugal,” said the 55-year-old grandmother.
As an educational assistant, she is texting, phoning or video-chatting every day, helping students with learning disabilities or behavioural problems with their online lessons.
“The students that I work with, their parents are extremely appreciative of what I do for them,” she said.
She has also put together food hampers as part of an Education Ministry program to provide 75,000 meals a week to 16,000 vulnerable families whose children relied on receiving food from their schools.
Some of her colleagues are working inside classrooms, with the 4,700 children of essential service workers and about 300 vulnerable students who are attending B.C. schools. Charlton said she hopes COVID-19’S silver lining is a new appreciation for people who work important service-related jobs but face challenges making ends meet.
“I’m not alone here, working two jobs or three jobs. I’ve worked with many people who have to do the exact same thing,” she said.
“Hopefully this wakes up a lot of people to realize that service people are undervalued, underpaid, and not noticed. I know why they don’t take days off because it is the same thing as in restaurants: If you are sick, you either can’t afford it or nobody will take your shift. Because everybody has other jobs they are at. It is a crazy hamster wheel we are all running on.”
IN THE CENTRE OF THE STORM
Dorothy Nelson has worked for 35 years in a Vancouver care home that has had a COVID -19 outbreak, one that resulted in dozens of infections of residents and staff, and the deaths of 11 residents.
Care aides have toiled at the centre of this storm, as there have been outbreaks at more than 40 facilities, leading to the deaths of more than 85 residents (two-thirds of all B.C. COVID -19 deaths) and the infection of at least 190 staff. They have dealt with shortages of personal protective equipment, and many worked overtime after the province banned aides from being employed in more than one facility as a measure to reduce the spread of the virus.
When Nelson spoke to Postmedia, she had worked 31 of the previous 35 days, and on five of those days she had worked a double shift. She said the care home did “an amazing job” responding to the outbreak, as did her colleagues who are trying their hardest under tough circumstances.
“It’s a tough situation. It’s a rewarding, rewarding job. At the same time, you know you are dealing with short staffing levels,” said Nelson, who is the chairwoman of the Hospital Employees’ Union unit at her workplace. “We do this job because we love the people. But we are not able to take care of these people the way we want to.”
Nelson said there isn’t enough time in the day for the compassionate care she’d like to provide.
“I’ve met a bunch of people that work in different assisted living facilities all across the province, and I find it shocking how much money they are making and the amount of things they are being asked to do and how many tenants they are required to do care for. It is just phenomenal,” she said.
Back in 2001, Nelson made $22 an hour before the former Liberal government essentially ripped up their union contracts. It would take 17 years, until 2018, for her to reach that hourly wage again, she said. Under the NDP government, her pay has increased to $25 an hour.
She is one of the lucky ones because she works in a unionized facility. The HEU says some care aides make just $17 an hour with no pension and minimal benefits, although the government has promised to bump up those lower wages.
Still, it is not a lot of money. Nelson can get by on her pay because she has a low mortgage, but said it is a struggle for her younger colleagues. “If I had to pay the rents that people pay now, then no. It is definitely not enough.”
If nothing else, Nelson said she hopes the COVID-19 crisis has “opened people’s eyes” to the crucial roles played by care aides.
“Now the public is more aware of the battle in long-term care facilities, and not just in British Columbia but in the world. And the job that care aides do is a huge, huge, huge job and it’s been basically under valued for many years.”
THE NEED KEEPS INCREASING
The Burnaby location of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank recently set a record: 280 people came on one day to pick up groceries, spaced two metres apart in a long line that snaked through the parking lot.
“With more and more people being unemployed, we know the need is greater and greater all the time,” said Jan Miserva, a food bank volunteer. “When we open at 10 o’clock here, until we close at 2 o’clock, it never stops. The line just keeps going for the entire four hours.”
The food bank has gone from 13 smaller, indoor locations to five larger sites in Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver and New Westminster, which allow people to maintain social distancing. Many of the hubs, including Mount Pleasant with a high of 320 customers in one day, have been “setting records each week” as COVID-19 restrictions drag on, said the food bank’s chief operating officer, Cynthia Boulter.
“New client sign-ups, people who have never been here before, are ramping up. We are about 15 per cent higher than we normally are. We figure three to six months from now is when it will probably reach a peak,” Boulter said during a recent visit to the food bank on Winston Street in Burnaby.
The food bank feeds, on average, 9,000 people a week, and CEO David Long predicts that could grow to 15,000 a week this year, especially after government subsidies end. Before COVID-19, the food bank was already helping a wide variety of people, including families, seniors, and retired workers who couldn’t make ends meet.
“So you can only imagine now, with so many people living paycheque to paycheque in Vancouver,” he said.
“Not everyone is going to have a job to go back to. Some people will. But there will be businesses that don’t survive, so for those people it is going to take longer to get back on their feet.”
The food bank offers much more now than cans of tuna and peas. It has freezers full of meat and lasagnas, fridges stocked with fruit, vegetables and dairy products. Once a month, registered families can pick up baby packs with diapers, formula and baby food, or preschool packs that help children’s brain and muscle development with cheese, yogurt, oatmeal, hummus and whole grain breads.
Long said he worries about food bank staff and volunteers contracting COVID-19 as they work the front lines during this pandemic. But they are following health and safety procedures and, so far, no one has.
“Hopefully the staff doesn’t burn out as well. We are working long hours, long days,” he said.
HIDDEN VICTIMS OF A LOCKDOWN
Children may be COVID-19’S hidden victims: those who don’t have enough food to eat because their parents are unemployed, who witness violence at home, who are lonely after weeks cooped up inside or who are struggling after losing much-needed structure, something that is particularly difficult for special-needs kids.
“There is a mental and physical impact of this crisis on child development, in particular for all the at-risk and low-income families,” said Viveca Ellis of the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition. “Parents are at their wits’ end.”
Disadvantaged children often have little access to recreation if the local park is closed, since they may not have a backyard to play in or a family car to take them to the beach.
“Higher income families have rackets and balls, and scooters and bikes they need to do everything. But for families that are low-income, that is not easy,” Ellis said.
Also not easy is finding technology for online schooling: libraries with free computers and cafés with free Wi-fi are closed, and you can’t go to a relative’s house to use a laptop. And applying for COVID-19 government aid programs, ranging from financial assistance to free mental health counselling, typically involves going online.
“When we closed those services, people were absolutely cut off,” Ellis said. “We’ve heard from families that have two or more children and do not have the technology to access the online school that they need to.”
First Call, a coalition of 108 organizations that advocates for children and youth, has found the two main concerns about the coronavirus’ impact on children are lack of digital connectivity and food.
“The thing rising to the top is food security,” said First Call’s Adrienne Montani. “I understand from the Aboriginal friendship centres that they are overwhelmed with requests for help with food and cellphones.”
Many service agencies are now distributing groceries. One started bringing food to vulnerable people in the Downtown Eastside, but routinely runs out of meals because demand is so high, Montani said.
She argued COVID-19 has magnified the inequities between haves and have-nots, which often include immigrant families, children in government care and those with unstable housing. Governments have started various social programs to try to help people pushed into financial hardship, and Montani would like to see those continue after the pandemic starts to ease.
“There is a really strong concern that as we restart the economy, the voices of neo-liberalism will pop up again, and austerity,” Montani said. “So a lot of people are trying to put out there: No, this is the time when we think about how do we take care of each other better?”
She added this crisis has also intensified discussions about a guaranteed basic income, something that Social Development Minister Shane Simpson said this week the province was looking into.
Ellis noted that children will benefit if their parents have financial stability.
“What this crisis has brought to light is how much more we have to accomplish in terms of ensuring these workers have access to employment benefits, steady secure full-time jobs, and equitable pay that is not at the poverty line.”
Not everyone is going to have a job to go back to ... there will be businesses that don’t survive, so for those people it’s going to take longer to get back on their feet.