COMMENT Meena Brisard | Secretary-Business Manager The government can take steps right now to redirect profit-taking back into the care of B.C.’s elders and the workers who deliver that care.
How we begin to fix long-term care
THROWBACK HEU HISTORY
AS MANY of you see every day, our long-term care system is fragmented with a wide range of working and caring conditions. But there is a theme that gets repeated over and over again. And it’s about how profit-taking in the health system is impacting the delivery of care. In her latest report, Billions More Reasons to Care, B.C. Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie finds that for-profit care home operators doubled their profits between 2017/18 and 2021/22. Their profit jumped from $3,439 per bed to $7,465 per bed – more than seven times the amount of surplus generated by non-profit care operators. Over the same period, private sector costs for delivering seniors’ care took a big jump. In fact, publicly subsidized long-term care delivered by the private sector rose 35 per cent – well beyond the rate of inflation. And it gets worse. The report also found that for-profit care home operators failed to deliver 500,000 care hours for which they received funding. In contrast, non-profit care homes delivered 93,000 more hours of care than they were funded to deliver. More costly. More profits. Half-a-million hours of care missing. Mackenzie’s report also shows a wide variation in labour costs
between for-profit and non-profit providers despite the additional funding provided to top-up wages during the pandemic to match those in public sector agreements. B.C can do better. While the current government inherited this fractured long-term care system, it can take steps right now to redirect profit-taking back into the care of B.C.’s elders and the workers who deliver that care. They can bring in greater transparency to ensure public funding goes to frontline care. Government could enforce regulations so operators meet standards. They could invest all new care home funding in public and non-profit care homes. And they could end the practice of subcontracting care and support services. But perhaps most importantly, the province can restore the common standards we had in place 20 years ago. This would reduce staff turnover and provide a standard level of working and caring conditions across all long-term care homes and assisted living facilities. Together, these actions by the government would put the focus back on seniors receiving the care they need.
YOU’RE A MEAN ONE, MR. GRINCH! In 2016, workers at six sites run by the Good Samaritan Society voted for strike action. At a public rally that December, members in Salmon Arm showed up with the mean old green one himself, with signs that read “Good Sam hired a Grinch!” and “Even Grinch supports seniors’ care!” Members eventually got a deal, but that contract expired in March 2020. And instead of returning to the bargaining table to negotiate a new agreement, Good
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Samaritan has been stalling ever since. HEU members at seven Good Sam locations have worked more than three-and-a-half years without a contract. And members have been taking job action, after a 98 per cent “yes” vote to strike in July. As the holiday season grows nearer, members can only assume that seven years later, the Grinch’s heart hasn’t grown any bigger.
