“Exploitation,” low wages and minimal payment for travel time are the reasons 4,500 personal support workers are giving for hitting the picket line.

The employees of Red Cross Care Partners, including 800 from the Greater Toronto Area, went on strike Wednesday.

The province is increasingly relying on these home-care workers to help keep ailing seniors out of hospitals and long-term-care homes by assisting with such task as bathing, dressing, taking medication and preparing meals.

The striking PSWs, most of whom are women, make about $15 an hour and have not had a wage increase in more than five years, said Sharleen Stewart, president of Service Employees International Union Healthcare, which represents the workers.

That’s tantamount to a 7 per cent pay cut over the last two years when inflation and the rising cost of gas is taken into account, she said.

The workers recently rejected a tentative deal which would have given them an 11 cent an hour wage increase, Stewart said.

According to the union, about 48,000 clients across Ontario, mostly seniors, are affected by the strike.

Tanya Elliott, spokesperson for the Canadian Red Cross Society, said the organization only learned Monday night of the strike plans and has been helping local community care access centres, provincial bodies that co-ordinate home-care services, to make alternative arrangements for clients.

“The safety and well-being of our clients is our top priority and we have some contingency plans in place. We will be making every effort to ensure that any disruption to our clients is minimized,” she said.

Other home-care agencies are being asked to pinch hit.

Red Cross Care Partners is a for-profit company and is the largest home-care agency in Ontario.

Stewart charged that too much of the money that the province gives the agency to provide home-care services ends up going to administration and bureaucracy.

About 300 striking workers and supporters protested outside Queen’s Park where NDP health critic France Gelinas (Nickelbelt) decried Ontario’s “broken” home-care system.

She said poor working conditions contribute to high staff turnover. In addition to low wages, PSWs get paid very little for the amount time and gas it takes to drive from one client to another, Gelinas said.

Because of the high turnover rate, seniors see a steady stream of different PSWs and sometimes no workers show up at all, Gelinas noted.

“The government has known that our home-care system is broken. You do not have quality of home-care when you do not have continuity of care,” she said.

Health Minister Deb Matthews told reporters that she would like to see a quick resolution to the strike, but does not plan to intervene

“We will let the collective bargaining process work. I cannot say how important it is that both parties get back to the table. They provide care that people count on,” she said.

Striking PSW Deborah Couturier, who works in the Mississauga-Halton area, makes $15 an hour, or $35,000 to $40,000 a year.

“For too long we have just been accepting an agreement just to keep our jobs. We are intimidated. We are afraid to stand up for fairness, but it has gotten to a point where we can’t do that anymore,” she said.

She described how she can be scheduled to see clients hours apart, but is not paid for the lag time in between.

“You can start at six in the morning and be working until nine at night, but be paid for only eight hours,” she said.

Ashley Mimeault, who works as a PSW in the Kitchener area, gets paid $14.17 an hour.

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“When you work in a nursing home you have the support of a whole team, but when you work in a home you are by yourself and the full care of the person is all on you,” she said.

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