End home-care bidding: CUPE

Jules Tupker says he learned first-hand the dangers of Ontario’s competitive bidding system for home-care in the province, a revolving door of underpaid providers who leap at the first opportunity to take their services elsewhere.

Tupker, whose father and mother-in-law both needed support at home in their golden years, on Tuesday helped lead a Canadian Union of Public Employees push to end the competitive bidding system and create an environment less driven by profit and more driven by community care.

Otherwise, he said, it’s just not fair people who need care, but don’t want to move into a long-term care facility or can’t get the daily treatment they need through their local hospital.

He points to his father, who passed away a few years ago.

"(The home-care worker) would be there for two, three or four months. Then she’d be gone," Tupker said. "At the end of the day he said he couldn’t deal with it any longer and went into a long-term-care home."

He added it’s difficult enough to convince people, particularly seniors with all their faculties intact, that they need help, especially with personal matters like diaper changes and drug dispensing.

"The constant turnover is creating all kinds of problems for the people they serve. It’s not a proper way to run home care … because the wages and benefits aren’t there."

The compulsory contracting out of home-care services was put in place under former Ontario premier Mike Harris in the mid-1990s, forcing community care access centres to take the lowest bid.

Because wages in the private sector are on average about six dollars an hour less than at a hospital or long-term-care facility – according to CUPE figures – workers quickly bolt to higher-paying jobs when positions become available. As many as 57 per cent of the workforce changed jobs over a recent one-year period.

It’s also meant a much higher number of casual, part-time workers in the field, with unpredictable schedules, few benefits and an average of 30 hours a week, not to mention a built-in profit margin that union officials say eats away at the level of care.

"Every dollar dedicated to health-care spending should be used for services," said CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn.

On top of that, instead of an integrated health-care system, competitors keep secrets to avoid losing contracts and home care is actually costing the province more money than it did when community-based organizations like the Victorian Order of Nurses were in charge.

He added the fact that the current government hasn’t given any indication of how they plan to proceed – service contracts expired on March 31 – has him worried. The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty have twice suspended the bidding process, but all signs suggest it will continue for another five years.

"We need a considered review to develop the best home-care system, one that goes beyond the previous Liberal government’s attempt to fine-tune contracting out and builds a public, not-for-profit home-care system," Hahn said, calling on the province to take input from workers, patients and not-for-profit providers, and to extend the moratorium on new contract bids.