Ottawa and the provinces have struck a deal to boost the pay of essential workers. Together they're going to cough up four billion dollars to top up the near-slave wages of those who change grandma's sheets and empty her bed pan.
Yet this is another example of a quick fix to an enduring problem. Government putting up money because the private sector refuses to pay its workers a living wage. We wind up subsidizing the nursing homes where our loved ones have been dying during this pandemic.
"We know, however, that once we get through this, in the months and years to come, we're also going to have to have reflections about how we manage and how we maintain our long-term care facilities, how we support essential workers who are very low paid, how we move forward as a society to make sure that our vulnerable are properly taken care of and properly rewarded for the important work they do."What's wrong with making it easier for these workers to unionize and collectively bargain? How about giving workers the ability to invoke mandatory arbitration? Perhaps a guaranteed wage so these essential workers don't have to work two or more jobs, worsening the chance of transmitting diseases from one nursing home to another?
If we don't want ghetto economics to remain the key to private care nursing homes, that must change. If the private sector can't or won't do the job isn't it time for government to step in? They do that fast enough when it's Justin Trudeau's Trans Mountain pipeline or Jason Kenney's Keystone XL. Why can't they do as much for our elderly and vulnerable? People shouldn't be a secondary priority of their governments.
11 comments:
It's time to tally up the cost of bailing out the "economy".
Nursing home staff having to be subsidised, poultry and beef producers having to provide decent working conditions and asking for monetary help to do it too!
I fear much of subsidizing the economy will send more monies to the corporate boardroom.
TB
We don't need to be incentivizing exploitative nursing home operators because they aren't decent enough to pay an adequate income to their workers.
If the taxpayers pick up a chunk of their payroll that ought to be repaid, in priority, out of the operator's earnings.
Someone who empties your bedpan deserves no less.
meanwhile the hunt for the origin of this disease goes on ....
"Covid-19 cases in France can be dated back to as early as November 16, nearly 10 weeks before the country’s first confirmed cases of the disease were thought to have occurred, according to a French hospital."
ironic that Pompeo's blustering fantasies get more attention than this
It's election year in America, NPoV. The origins of the pandemic don't matter as much as which country it can be pinned on to suit Trump's interests.
"Though the virus is believed to have originated with the horseshoe bat, part of a genus that’s been roaming the forests of the planet for 40 million years and thrives in the remote jungles of south China, even that remains uncertain."
The specifics of COVID-19 aside, it is clear that humanity is the culprit:
"Scientists have, however, been studying the coronaviruses of southern China for years and warning that swift climate and environmental change there — in both loss of biodiversity and encroachment by civilization — was going to help new viruses jump to people."
https://www.propublica.org/article/climate-infectious-diseases
Trailblazer said, "I fear much of subsidizing the economy will send more monies to the corporate boardroom."
I agree. Check this: I made millions out of the last debt crisis. Now the wealthy stand to win again
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/i-made-millions-last-debt-crisis-rich-win-coronavirus-fair-tax
NPoV, I did a post a few days ago that dealt with research showing bats in southeast Asia carry a number of coronavirus strains.
https://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.com/2020/04/heres-idea-s.html
Toby, it's inevitable. Disaster Capitalism. There are fortunes being made even as we sometimes can't find places to bury our dead.
During wars we call it profiteering and shun those who do it but rarely do we take any real action.
Toby, if you want to pursue this topic a good start would be Phil Mirowski's "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown." Fair warning, it's not an entirely easy read.
The proof is in the pudding. Doug Ford and his Cons are beholden to their buddies that populate the boardrooms of the Long Term Care (LTC) industry. For example we all know that Mike Harris (previous Premier of Ontario- a serious and dangerous Con) is Chair of Chartwell and earns $224K for doing so.
Do you really think That Dugg is going to raise the minimum wage and going to mandate changes to levels of care in LTC or mandate that only full time jobs will be available? I don't!
None of the existing Political Parties have even discussed or proposed the "new normal" so it is up to us to push for it and obliterate the conditions that have led to the tokenism and half-hearted efforts to compensate the LTC workers.
That's a dismal but probably realistic prognosis, Ben. There have been so many op-eds proclaiming that we can never go back, that neoliberalism is finished, that a new future awaits but that's just talk. No one is offering a convincing "next big idea." There are no signs that the neoliberals, with their pursuit of perpetual exponential growth (GDP), are preparing to leave the field. I don't think they will, not without a fight. Governments are too integrated in the global economy to be able to just walk away.
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