Skip to content

'Insulting offer': Home-care workers eye looming strike deadline

Workers planning an 'information picket' this afternoon outside ParaMed's regional office in south-end Barrie
AdobeStock_120201098
Stock image

Upwards of 200 low-waged, home-care workers in the region are staring down a rapidly approaching strike deadline after what union officials are calling an “insulting offer” by ParaMed Home Health Care.

Workers are seeking a 2.5 per cent annual wage increase for workers for the next three years across the board, explained Greg McVeigh, a staff representative and negotiator with the Orillia Regional Office of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 393, which represents ParaMed’s personal support workers (PSWs) and home support workers (HSWs) in Simcoe-Muskoka.

What the company — which union officials describe as the largest home-care corporation in Canada, owned by for-profit giant Extendicare — is offering is a far cry from what workers deserve, he noted.

ParaMed home-care workers, who provide personal care such as bathing and personal hygiene, toileting, dressing, meal preparation and social support to clients who live at home in individual dwellings as well as clients who live in retirement homes across Simcoe and Muskoka, currently earn between $16.67 and $19.70 per hour.

“What ParaMed is offering is lump sums anywhere around $300 to $700 … but it’s not a wage increase. Once they get it, it’s gone. (For) our lowest-paid workers, they are offering eight cents an hour. Anyone over $19 per hour, it would be three years before they’d see a wage increase. They are red-circled with lump sums," McVeigh said. 

The most contract expired March 31, 2022, said McVeigh, who also noted in 2019 workers were given 0.7 per cent increase. In 2020 and 2021, they received a one per cent wage increase. He says the average increase in the private sector is around 4.1 per cent.

"Extendicare ParaMed is the largest health-care company in Canada and their revenues are over $1 billion per year. We are actually asking for less (than the average) and we are asking for that on lower wages,” he told BarrieToday. “We are asking for people who are making around $17 per hour, where 2.5 per cent works out to be about 40 cents per hour, or an average $12 per week.”

“We are asking for a 2.5 per cent, per year wage increase,” said Cheryl Bumstead, Local 393 president and bargaining team chair. “We think that’s more than reasonable during this time of record inflation. ParaMed has refused to budge from their offer of eight cents per hour in the first year for our lowest-paid members who earn $16.67 per hour.

"They also want our members who earn $19.70 per hour to get no increase at all for three years. There’s no way we can accept that," she added. 

Workers are planning what McVeigh called an “information picket” this afternoon (Jan. 18) outside ParaMed's regional office, located at 231 Bayview Dr., in Barrie’s south end.

“We will have what we call the small but mighty army. We hope to have about 50 people there and will be having an information picket and trying to tell ParaMed loud and clear that the wages they’re offering us are unacceptable,” he said, adding these workers are an extension to local hospitals and long-term care facilities. “They are the people who allow others to live independently without being in a care facility. They play a vital role in our system.”

With a strike deadline of Jan. 27, McVeigh told BarrieToday that despite the vital role these workers play, he isn’t feeling confident the company will come to the bargaining table with a fair offer before next Friday.

“These people are people who are from our communities in Simcoe County," he said. "They are good people and they deserve to be treated well with a decent wage increase like everybody else gets. They are our heart and soul.”