What happened to all the love we had for those PSWs working in retirement homes and long-term care?

Not long ago, in the early days of the covid panic, the working conditions of PSWs employed in those facilities came under scrutiny.

We were appalled. 

Poverty wages.

An industry-wide practice of providing only part-time work (to avoid having to pay benefits), resulting in workers carrying the virus from one facility to another as they tried to stitch together a living wage from multiple part-time jobs.  

Important people in government and media vowed things would change.

It's time we treated these essential workers with respect!

Benefits!

Sick days!

A living wage!

Two years later, I check out some current PSW jobs available around town. Happy to report there seem to be more full time gigs on offer, although there's still plenty of places hiring part-time only.

So how is the poverty wages thing going?

Here's a posting at the Canada Job Bank for a PSW job at Seasons, reputed to be the priciest retirement joint in town.

Seasons is a for-profit chain that operates 22 "retirement communities" in Alberta and Ontario. According to their website, they won a "Great Place to Work certification in 2021, for the second year in a row."

Seriously?

They're offering fifteen bucks an hour. 

The local McDonalds offers a higher starting wage, no First Aid Certificate, CPR Training, or criminal record check required!

If our front-line PSWs are so important, why do they still get poverty wages?

We've been hearing all sorts of platitudes about our wonderful front-line health care professionals.

The three hundred thousand a year MDs.

The hundred thousand a year RNs.

And the PSWs who have to stitch three part-time gigs together to make thirty-five thousand a year.

What's wrong with this picture?

It's the PSWs who are charged with the most intimate level of care of our elderly. They're the ones who do the tube-feeding and change the adult diapers. They're the one's who bathe dear old granddad and wipe his drool and wipe his ass.

If there's a contagious disease to be caught, it's the PSWs who are gonna catch it first.


For fifteen bucks an hour.