By Niall Harney
Previously published in the Winnipeg Free Press October 24, 2024
Health support workers dealt with some of the worst effects of government penny-pinching during the Covid-19 pandemic, with disastrous effects for staff, residents, patients and clients across healthcare.
Early details of the deal between 25,000 health support workers (represented by MGEU and CUPE) and provincial health authorities, ratified by members on Oct. 18, show promising signs that this deal lays the foundation for staffing up our healthcare system, particularly in home care and long-term care. Initial contract highlights include an average 27 per cent increase over four years, improvements to starting wages, leave benefits, critical upgrades to mileage rates, and additional pay for long-serving employees.
To understand the significance of the deal we need to look back at health support worker bargaining over the last few years.
Apart from a brief wage top-up, health support workers effectively worked through the pandemic without a raise. A selection of health support workers making less than $25 per hour received a $5 per hour pay top-up in November 2020 thanks to federal support for essential workers, however these top-ups only lasted two months. The previous government’s legislated wage freeze – which was only abandoned after prolonged legal battles with Manitoba unions – left health support workers without a contract for five years prior to signing a seven-year deal in August 2022, retroactive to 2017.
The last contract included a 9.6% pay increase over seven years – modest increases that were more than eaten up by 25.2% inflation over the same time period. In real terms, health care workers took a 16% pay-cut under the Pallister Conservatives.
A recent survey of health support workers represented by CUPE 204 found that 29 per cent of workers were working a second job to make ends meet while 40 per cent were working more than 40 hours per week. Further, 37 per cent of respondents reported being forced to drain their savings while around half reportedly cut back on household necessities like food and clothing.
Entering the latest round of negotiations, top wages for Health Care Aides were the lowest in the country according to data from the Government of Canada Job Bank. Starting wages for laundry aides, dietary aides, and other support workers were also lowest in the country, with some starting as low as $17.05 per hour.
As a result, health support worker wages were not competitive with other positions that require less training, particularly in retail and food service. Difficult working conditions and low wages are creating a staffing crisis across these support positions.
Short staffing has been an issue within Manitoba’s care sector for years due to population aging, rising client/resident needs, and a lack of government investment. The pandemic turbocharged these underlying trends.
The result of short staffing has been growing waitlists and delays for clients/residents, staff departures, and a growing workload for remaining staff. This has created a vicious cycle of burnout in addition to the lack of competitive wages noted above.
The Future of Home Care Services report delivered to the government in 2016 found that in some regional health authorities vacancy rates were consistently around 8-10 percent. Documents obtained by the then opposition NDP found that following the implementation of wage freeze mandates and a broader austerity program under the previous government, vacancy rates in some RHAs had moved closer to 25%.
A survey of long-term care and home care workers in 2022 found that over one in three workers in long-term care and home care were very likely to leave the profession in the next five years, with most workers citing understaffing and low wages as reasons for departure.
A survey of health support workers represented by CUPE 204 earlier this year found nearly half are actively searching for a new job, many outside of healthcare entirely.
Under the previous provincial government some recruitment and retention initiatives were extended to health support workers, such as weekend shift premiums, licensure reimbursements, and benefits top-ups, but only on a temporary basis.
The fact is that a raise for health support workers is long overdue and a necessity to turn the staffing crisis across health support professions around.
Workers need full-time hours and a family-supporting wage to ensure they can build a career in healthcare, as well as stay in their home communities. These workers were deemed essential during the pandemic, and remain essential to health care and the safe operation of our healthcare facilities.
Niall Harney holds the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Manitoba
