Long-term care workers need secure, not precarious, jobs

One of the first lessons learned during the deadly 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto was the danger of having nurses and other health professionals working part-time jobs in multiple hospitals.

Nurses and other workers employed at two or more hospitals were unintentionally taking the coronavirus from one health-care facility to another, highlighting what Dr. Donald Low called the “dangerous phenomenon of superspreaders” in his book “SARS: Lessons From Toronto.”

The majority of the estimated 438 SARS cases in Toronto were healthcare workers, hospital patients and their visitors. Forty-four SARS patients died in the city.

Yet, as we watch COVID-19 ravaging its way through our long-term-care homes, infecting the most vulnerable residents as well as staff, we still have part-time nurses, personal support workers, residential care aides and other LTC staff working multiple jobs in Ontario. Often, it’s because they can only get part-time, casual, contract or temporary work and would love a fulltime job, with all the benefits and security that entails. Who works part time at multiple jobs? Mainly women. Statistics Canada reports multiple job holders are most likely to work in the female-dominated health-care and social assistance sectors.

The number of part-time health-care workers with multiple jobs increased in the past 20 years, despite SARS. Of course some people want, and need, part-time work to fit their lifestyle, but they aren’t the ones forced to work two or more jobs to make ends meet.

Job listings for Ontario LTC homes show lots of part-time and temporary work on offer for RNs, RPNs, PSWs, as well as for maintenance and food service staff, but few full-time positions.

Apparently, ensuring profit for private LTC operators is a higher priority than consistent, quality care for our seniors, and steady, full-time work with benefits for the people we entrust to care for them. The “ring of iron” Premier Doug Ford wants around LTC homes is more like a rusted sieve.

Any of us with loved ones in long-term care struggle with the no visitors policy, knowing our parents or grandparents are not only scared and lonely, but in many cases, confused at the best of times. It’s heartbreaking not being able to give them a hug. The thought of any of them dying without family present is simply horrific, but sadly all too real in this pandemic. British Columbia told health-care workers to report to only one job to limit the spread of COVID-19, but Ontario has not followed suit. Restricting their movement to just one LTC job now would put even more stress on staffing levels at some homes already hit hard by the pandemic.

There are hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in border cities like Windsor with jobs at hospitals in both Canada and the United States. About one-third of COVID-19 cases in Windsor are health-care workers, more than half work in Detroit. Some were told to stay in one country or the other until the pandemic is over, but closing the border to them completely could worsen the outbreak in Michigan, which has had far more cases, and deaths, than Ontario.

There are lots of job listings for another sector deemed essential in this pandemic, but again, most openings by grocery stores for clerks, cashiers, warehouse staff and drivers are part time. It’s time companies stepped up and offered workers willing to risk exposure to COVID-19 full-time jobs.

The emphasis on corporate profit and part-time employment over job security and a living wage must change, especially for workers we all realize are indeed essential.