Sometimes the government and its contract health providers just don’t know where to draw the line between fiscal responsibility and simply being cheap.
Nobody respects a cheapskate except for other cheapskates.
Already saving a bundle by whisking patients out of hospital as soon as possible, the province had to rush immediately to “cheap” when it came to paying the thousands of personal support workers (PSW) whose job it is to care for these patients.
When something is cheap, we usually don’t put a lot of value in it. Yet PSWs are incredibly valuable to the Ontario’s government’s overall health strategy. They are also critical to home care recipients and long-term care residents who rely upon them. So why is the government still treating PSWs as if they were of only minimal value when it comes to pay?
Recently Wal-Mart endured considerable wrath from the public when a store in Canton, Ohio actually asked for food donations to support their underpaid employees. Everybody was reminded of the Walton family’s $150 billion personal fortune made from the toil of these workers. And of course, if the donors bought that food from Wal-Mart…
Closer to home the VON pays so little to its part-time PSWs in Grey Bruce Counties that some have also become reliant on charities and food banks to make ends meet for their families.
OPSEU Diablogue 