Rather of focusing on how to bring working conditions for the female home care workforce up to the health center standard, it is looking at bringing back the system that damaged home care 25 years back! The one area where the female house care workforce was able to preserve decent working conditions was in the Community Care Access Centres (now called Home and Community Care Support Services). Now the Ford federal government wants to get rid of the public oversight of the for-profit corporations supplying house care and has actually declined to supply any assurance that these women house care workers will have any security in the restructuring. We are dealing with a significant staffing crisis in health care and no place more so than in house care. Xolisiwe (Connie) Ndlovu is a house care employee and the president of CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) 7977, representing house care employees in Toronto.Read more about: Doug FordThis material was initially released here.

Everywhere, ladies health-care employees are giving up. It is even worse in the home care sector. We have actually had enough of the violence, the irregular work weeks, the unsettled time between customers, the lack of pensions, and the low wages.With inflation performing at over 8 percent and building and construction employees bargaining wage increases approximately that level, the Ford government is sticking public sector workers– who are mainly women– with a 1 percent wage boost for 3 years.Over 45,000 healthcare jobs are vacant in Ontario. You would think that the Ford government would find out a lesson from this. No. Rather, it is doubling down on its low-wage technique for health-care employees. It can not maintain or recruit hospital employees? No problem. Move patients to for-profit retirement houses where settlement is a fraction of healthcare facility pay.Here in home care, things are particularly bad. The previous PC federal government presented compulsory contracting out for home care. Home-care company had to tender quotes on openly financed agreements to provide home care services. Personal business guaranteeing to provide low-priced services often won the bids and displaced numerous non-profit service providers. These affordable contracts resulted in low wages for employees and a decreased requirement of look after clients. The staying non-profits had to adopt the same practices as the for-profit corporations and focus more on shiny propositions and less on the quality of care.The result was chaos for local neighborhoods. Non-profit companies with decades of experience were cut out. The continuity of care was lost. Workers wound up with irregular hours and constantly looked for much better opportunities somewhere else– even though a lot of liked their home care work. In the end, the federal government was required to end competitive bidding. There were a lot of issues. However it had actually already left its mark– prevalent privatization and highly precarious work. Now, things are so bad that only about half of the required home-care sees can even be scheduled.Incredibly, the Ford government has silently begun to examine restoring competitive bidding. Instead of concentrating on how to bring working conditions for the female home care workforce up to the healthcare facility standard, it is looking at bringing back the system that damaged home care 25 years back! This is the plan for all of house care. The one location where the female home care workforce was able to keep decent working conditions remained in the Community Care Access Centres (now called Home and Community Care Support Services). These companies manage the contracted service providers. Now the Ford government wishes to eliminate the public oversight of the for-profit corporations supplying home care and has actually declined to provide any assurance that these females house care employees will have any protection in the restructuring. On Sept. 1, the government will even bring in a guideline that will let the for-profit house care service providers oversee themselves in some ways.Is there any learning by the Ford federal government? We are dealing with a major staffing crisis in health care and no place more so than in house care. This federal government continues to pursue a low-wage strategy for the female health care workforce, a technique that is quickly demolishing health care in Ontario. We need to end the war on ladies health care workers. We need a federal government that can help make house care an attractive location to work– not a worse place to work. Xolisiwe (Connie) Ndlovu is a home care worker and the president of CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) 7977, representing home care workers in Toronto.Read more about: Doug FordThis content was initially released here.