It’s a “frightening” time for 500 or so care aids working in one of Richmond’s six long-term care facilities and for the residents living in them.
That’s according to their B.C.-based Hospital Employees’ Union (HEU), which is in the thick of helping its members adhere to the B.C. government’s “one site direction,” from March, which dictates that care aids can only work at one facility, as opposed to the multiple many of them worked at previously.
However, at the crux of that transition – designed to stop or slow the transmission of COVID-19 among society’s most vulnerable population – is the requirement for wages to be standardized across the region.
And even with the B.C. government promising to partly subsidize the “wage standardization,” the process isn’t moving nearly quickly enough for HEU’s secretary-business manager, Jennifer Whiteside.
“Many of our members have to work at multiple part-time jobs at multiple sites in order to make a living,” explained Whiteside to the Richmond News.
“The risks of that (practice) are very evident during the pandemic. We need that requirement to equalize the wages, otherwise workers are going to look to where they get paid the most.
“Our members get paid as much as $25.33 an hour and, in some private facilities, up to $7 less.
“For-profit (facilities), however, have a tendency to sub-contract and that leads to obvious problems, as we then have too many players at the table (for wage negotiations).”
Whiteside – whose union has around 50,000 members at almost 300 long-term facilities in B.C. - said she has heard of a few sites starting to implement the one-site directive, but not enough.
“Our members are still not being paid that higher wage yet; it should have been effective from April 10,” she added.
