Sask. has spent less than half the funds allocated for essential worker top-ups
SASKATOON Saskatchewan’s government will give out less than half of a joint federal-provincial fund meant to top up essential workers’ pay in the early months of the COVID -19 pandemic.
As of Sept. 4, the Ministry of Finance dispensed roughly $24 million of the $56 million Saskatchewan Temporary Wage Supplement Program, which gave eligible workers a $400 top-up for each four-week period they worked in the sixteen-week period between March 15 and July 4, for a maximum total of $1,600.
Ministry spokesman Jeff Welke said 19,940 workers submitted applications for 78,640 distinct fourweek pay periods as of the Sept. 1 deadline.
Of those, 59,085 four-week pay period applications from 17,415 workers were approved, with another 5,407 applications from 1,891 more employees pending.
Even if all those applications were approved, the program would still come in at under $26 million, prompting some unions to ask why the government isn’t making more health care and vulnerable sector workers eligible.
“The government is hanging on to money that should have gone to front-line workers,” Canadian Union of Public Employees Saskatchewan president Judy Henley argued. “It’s not theirs to keep.”
Unions like CUPE have argued the program has excluded too many people.
About $53 million of the $56 million program comes from the federal government, part of a $3 billion program to give low-income
essential workers a temporary raise for their work in the spring and early summer.
Provinces and territories were given discretion on how to allocate that cash. In Saskatchewan, the top-up was originally only available to workers in long-term care, home care, shelters and other facilities who earned less than $2,500 per month or $24 per hour.
The government later created a second “program” of eligibility with no pay cap for workers at long-term care, integrated health facilities and other personal or special care homes.
Henley argued many workers whose jobs are still affected by the pandemic were not eligible because they fell between those two categories. Medical laboratory staff who process COVID-19 tests are not eligible, for example. CUPE has also written Finance Minister Donna Harpauer, asking her to make members of Local 600, who work at government-run crisis and respite homes, eligible for one of the program streams.
“They kind of did a patchwork approach to this,” Henley said.
Welke said the money is being reserved, in part, in case the program needs to reopen in the event of a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections later in the year.
“Provinces were able to use the funding based on the needs of each province, and the program has served its purpose at this point,” Welke said.
“It will be evaluated later this fall if we need to offer this program again, should there be a second wave.”
He wrote that the intent of the program was to discourage lowpaid workers from quitting.
“The temporary wage supplement was intended to assist workers in facilities where essential care was being provided, some of whom might have made the decision to leave their jobs in favour of collecting other benefits like the federal Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB),” he wrote.
“This was not a recognition program or form of hazard pay. It was a program to encourage workers to stay on the job in critical care settings during the pandemic.”
Henley said that doesn’t make sense, because a worker who voluntarily left a job would not have been eligible for the CERB — which gave $2,000 in taxable income a month to people who were unable to work because of the pandemic.
She agreed the money is not hazard pay, but noted many people making substantially more than $2,500 are now eligible for the program, while others making far less are not.
Henley argued those positions are underpaid to begin with.
“There wasn’t a worker I know of in the CBO (community-based organization) sector that was walking off the job,” she said. “They were going to work.”