REGINA, Sask. — CUPE Saskatchewan was back at the legislature Thursday, this time raising issues affecting workers in the community-based organization sector.
A number of workers from the sector were at the legislature, raising concerns about pay and working conditions. Their appearance came ahead of Friday's Community-Based Organization Worker Appreciation Day in Saskatchewan.
Those in attendance included Kent Peterson, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Saskatchewan, as well as Christie MacNeill, chair of its community-based organization workers' steering committee. MacNeill said people in the sector work in group homes, housing and shelter support, daily care and independent living assistance for people with disabilities, as well as with people experiencing crises who need support to live safely at home.
Peterson spoke of the priorities workers wanted to see addressed, including the need for multi-year funding for CBOs in Saskatchewan.
“You cannot operate this sector year by year when organizations have no idea what funding they are going to receive the next year. It makes it very challenging to staff appropriately and to provide those services, so just like they've been able to do in the post-secondary sector, we need multi-year funding here in Saskatchewan for the CBO sector and social services.”
Peterson also pointed to health and safety issues, including short staffing, maintenance not being done, tripping hazards, leaking roofs and the “psychological and physical violence that our folks face every day at work because of the types of work they do and services they provide.”
He also called for more transparency and accountability measures to be put in place “so that if the ministry is giving funding that is intended to pay people fairly in the sector, then those workers should get that pay. Right now, that's not happening, and so it's something that we need to fix. Again, would love to talk with the minister about it.”
Peterson voiced frustration that attempts to meet with Social Services Minister Terry Jenson had been rebuffed for what he said was almost six months.
“I heard his words in the Chamber today celebrating CBO workers and appreciating them, yet he refuses to come out here and actually meet with us or meet virtually. We've been very flexible, he won't do it.”
Peterson said workers were frustrated at the lack of action.
“We have the solutions to these problems, we just need a minister who's willing to talk with us. Words are cheap. We look for actions, and he won't even bother to clear a half hour in his schedule to meet with CBO workers. It's unacceptable, and so what he says on the floor of an assembly about appreciating CBO workers is hollow until it's met with some actions and a willingness to actually sit down with us.”
MacNeill also voiced frustration, saying the workers felt “unseen” by the minister in his remarks.
“When you say that you give a two per cent (raise) and you're putting energy and effort into improving the sector but you're not even meeting fundamental inflation for an already underfunded and underpaid sector… I would say that his words did not feel like appreciation, they felt quite hollow.”
Speaking to reporters, Jenson said he was open to meeting with union representatives, including CUPE.
“These are discussions that the ministry, at the ministry official level, they have with our union partners, and then we get together once they've had those discussions, and I'm open to meeting with the unionized partners that we have… and having those discussions about what they feel they need and then how we're able to best respond to that, given the multiple pressures that we have as government.”
He said CBO funding is “something that's obviously taken extremely seriously because it's the CBOs that are really on the front lines looking after some of our most vulnerable people in terms of disabilities and things like that.”
“These are discussions that we have year-round. I'm out in the communities, whether it's here in Regina, whether it's Saskatoon, all over the province, meeting with the individual CBOs that we have funded contracts with to not only discuss their local operation, but in terms of recruitment and retention of their workers and what some of their challenges that they are seeing locally.”
As for the union’s request for multi-year funding, Jenson said the ministry uses multi-year agreements for operational purposes but prefers annualized funding “because as different things change, the area of disabilities is evolving all the time.”
“I don't know if it would be necessarily a good thing to have a multi-year agreement and then something happens in between in terms of, if we did a multi-year agreement with an escalator, all of a sudden the inflation rate changes, how do we address that? So, it's better to do it on an annualized basis but with a multi-year agreement to provide those services, and that way, again, we have those conversations ongoing.”
