“I think it is really important for the government to invest in home care. There will be enough workers if you give us full-time jobs, decent wages, job security, value our work. There’ll be no shortage of PSWs.” – Connie Ndlovu, president of CUPE 7797.
CUPE members’ perspectives helped shape a new report on home care, titled Caring about Care Workers: Centring Immigrant Women Personal Support Workers in Toronto’s Home Care Sector. The report was published by Social Planning Toronto.
Researchers found that personal support workers, PSWs, are subsidizing Ontario’s home care system with their unpaid labour. PSWs collectively provided 36.7 million hours of care to Ontarians in 2023-24 through the provincially-funded home care system. Their work supports home care recipients and their families, while also reducing pressure on hospitals, emergency departments, and long-term care homes.
“We heard directly from personal support workers with unmanageable work schedules and inadequate paid time who want to provide clients with high-quality care” says Beth Wilson, a senior researcher and policy analyst at Social Planning Toronto, and one of the report’s authors. “They end up using their personal, unpaid time to compensate for the failures of the provincial home care system.”
PSWs described many problems with working in the home care sector, including lack of guaranteed work hours, inadequate and unreliable incomes, and insufficient (or no) reimbursement of travel time and costs despite being required to travel between client homes as part of their work. PSWs working in private homes (usually without onsite support) recounted numerous health and safety risks, including exposure to infectious disease, injuries due to the physically demanding nature of the work, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and violence, harassment, and anti-Black racism.
“The most vulnerable workers are providing the most essential services in the worst working conditions,” says Dr. Naomi Lightman, an Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and one of the report’s authors. “Going forward, we need an end to private profit in the publicly funded home care system to ensure that every public dollar supports high-quality care and good working conditions for home care workers.”
Low wages, precarious employment, and poor working conditions have been driving home care labour shortages, which will have grave consequences for Ontarians.
The report authors also conducted interviews with seven individuals engaged in labour and community organizing pertaining to PSWs and home care; one such interview is with community activist, home care PSW, and president of CUPE 7797 Connie Ndlovu.
“I think it is really important for the government to invest in home care,” says Connie. “There will be enough workers if you give us full-time jobs, decent wages, job security, value our work. There’ll be no shortage of PSWs.”
The report puts forward detailed recommendations for the Ontario and federal governments, home care service provider organizations, unions, and the community sector, aimed at ensuring fair and decent compensation and working conditions for home care PSWs.
Read the full report >> (English Only)