Nearly 3,000 Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) health care workers across Ontario have been on strike since Jan. 30 after failed negotiations with their employers.
The workers say they are striking against their employers in the name of fairness and are searching for higher wages. They say they will no longer stand for being under-appreciated and disrespected in their role as caregivers.
Who are CCAC workers? They are the health care professionals who transition patients out of the hospital, or prevent patients from having to visit one through home visits. They co-ordinate community care and home-care for patients who are facing minor ailments to avoid staying in a hospital or long-term care environment.
These workers had a simple and minimal request in their negotiations: a 1.4 per cent salary increase each year for two years. The negotiations come after a contracted two year wage freeze, which ended March 2014. This increase in salary would allow these health care workers to receive a salary that is equal to, or slightly below, nurses who do comparable work in different nursing environments.
This wage increase is a necessary measure that needs to be taken if we want our nurses to stick around. These health care professionals are not being treated as the crucial workers that they are.
Nurses who work in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and public health care centres are already earning more than their counterparts at CCACs. While their job descriptions differ slightly, they all work hard to ensure the well-being of patients in Ontario.
However, the proposed wage increase has not been accepted. This has forced workers out on to freezing-cold picket lines. Hospitals all across Ontario are left significantly over-crowded, and patients are left waiting days longer than what is typical to be discharged.
This is because without CCAC workers, patients are not being moved out of the hospital into other care facilities.
It must be noted that the requested salary increase is only 1.4 per cent. When the annual inflation rate in Canada for 2014 was 1.91 per cent, a 1.4 per cent increase is less than what they should logically earn.
Lisa Turner, a registered nurse and care co-ordinator, and Ontario Nurses’ Association bargaining unit president said to the Kingston Whig-Standard that the increase they’re looking for still falls below the cost of living.
It is terrible that the workers who help ensure care for so many patients in Ontario are not entitled to a salary that allows them to afford living comfortably. The CCAC workers’ request is reasonable, if not too low, especially considering they say they are only looking to earn wage increases similar to contracts negotiated for nurses working in hospitals, public health, and nursing homes in 2014.
CCAC workers are critical to keeping hospitals open for the most detrimental ailments. As well as to give, what would be considered “low-priority” patients, speedy treatment from the comfort of their own home or somewhere close in their community.
By neglecting these health care workers, we’re also neglecting the people of Ontario who deserve to be treated by a variety of health care workers in their home and community.
We cannot treat these health care professionals as though their work is not valuable. We cannot allow them to be paid unfairly because they are not working in the traditional medical environment.
By rejecting their reasonable negotiation request, their employers are telling these crucial medical professionals that their work doesn’t matter.
