(A Brief update to the post below. Striking Red Cross workers returned to work without a contract in the days following Christmas on the hope that a satisfactory one can be achieved through arbitration.)
By Gary Screaton Page
Did I miss it? Or, is this another example of real stories alluding our local press?
What is going on with Red Cross home care services? I’ve read nothing about Red Cross Personal Support Workers being on strike. Actually that isn’t quite correct. I’ve heard from Red Cross when they tell my wife the worker is not coming to help her where I’m not always able to do so. I just haven’t read anything about the situation from the press.
When Home Care doesn’t come, many seniors who need care don’t get it. When workers go on strike for better pay and working conditions we usually hear about their doing so. However, when the government may be paying the shot, we apparently don’t quite get the full story in the local news.For several weeks now Personal Service Workers have been on strike at Red Cross. Clearly, the workers feel they are underpaid for the service they provide. The probably are. However, they are not General Motors or Chrysler, so no money for them. Red Cross is not Hydro One, so no more money for Red Cross to pay their workers.
When this Provincial Government doesn’t want the public informed, they seem to be able to make that happen. However, when news providers are not controlled by special interests we are quick to hear what is really going on. When special interests get at the politicians and visa versa, we tend not to hear until some newsperson’s tenacity breaks through the barriers and tells all. How else would we have learned about the Senate scandals. Certainly, the government wasn’t going to tell us.
Now, I’m not suggesting anything so paranoid as a conspiracy. Just commenting on a silence that seems so loud to me since I have not heard about the strike (at least from the press) which affects our family as well as hundreds of other families. Perhaps if we did, there would be more public input and more anger at another government health care fiasco.
Ah, but then, I could be wrong.
Dr. Gary Screaton Page has served, for years, as Chaplain with the Niagara Regional Police Service and he has provided counselling and other assistance to many newcomers to this region of Canada. He has also been an ongoing supporter and contributor of commentary to Niagara At Large.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Call me a cynic. Of course this local story has eluded our ‘local press’. The Standard and all Niagara Sunmedia papers are run by QMI, which has zero interest in local coverage, reprinting mindless trivia from celebrity-culture, etc. There’s your answer.
LikeLike
When this government under the guidance of then Health Minister George Smitherman decided to privatize Community Care in Niagara the Victorian Order of Nurses our local Florence Nightingales for well over 100 years was literally eliminated by privateers with actually NO NURSES but with first hand knowledge of the VON’s budget (ex VON person) she underbid the VON and the elimination became a reality as Care Partners then became the provider. I was informed that she hoped to pick up the once VON Nurses paying them at least $5.00 an hour less than what their VON rate was and that was much less than the private sector Nurses were taking home. It was so called legal but did the quality suffer? According to an elderly woman who called me she had to show this new group’s nurses how to apply bandages to her aged husband foot,,…..You be the judge I’ve had my fill of these Ontario Empires and there builders.l
LikeLike
I wasn’t really aware of the strike until I read Gary’s item! I did a quick Google search and found that the strike had been settled but not until after Gary’s story was published.
What little media coverage I did find was about the strike being over – not the impacts it had on the workers or, more importantly, on the people they care for.
Over the past few years I have seen PSWs in action – my partner’s mother is 104 years old and only went into a long-term care home six months ago. She had PSWs coming into her home to care for her. They were NOT supplied by the Red Cross – they were from a private agency contracted to the CCAC in the Hamilton area.
The vast majority of the PSWs were truly caring people, although in many cases there were communications problems. A great many were recent arrivals in Canada, often from the Phillipines. These people were willing to work hard to try to make their way and become valuable citizens.
Unfortunately, as newcomers with poor skills in English, they were forced to take very low-paying jobs as PSWs.
The work they do certainly deserves much more than minimum wage!
It would be interesting to learn how much the private contractors (Red Cross being one of them) make per hour per worker provided. I have a strong hunch there is a major difference between what the CCAC pays the contractors (using our tax dollars) and what those contractors pay the PSWs per hour!
Yes, I know this may make me sound quite left-wing, even though I am a small-c conservative.
The fact is that I see no room for profit in health care!!!
LikeLike