MPP Michael Mantha’s News from the Park : Northern Road Report Input
Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Michael Mantha
For months New Democrats have been raising concerns and highlighting issues facing Personal Support Workers (PSW’s) in the province. After contract negotiations fell through almost two weeks ago the provinces PSW’s have been on strike. The union representing the workers has indicated that PSW’s are not fairly compensated for their transportation time and expenses, and have no pension benefits. This is coupled with an hourly salary barely about minimum wage.
Over 9,000 PSW’s work in hospitals, the majority of them work in the long-term-care system. They are the backbone of our long-term-care system, and 26,000 of them work in our home care system. PSW’s do extremely important work and deserved to be praised for all they do in our province.
Unfortunately PSW’s are barely paid a living wage. Of the 26,000, most are paid just about minimum wage. Minimum wage in Ontario is $10.25. You will see many PSWs who don’t make $2 more an hour than minimum wage. Many of them work for $12, $12.25 an hour.
To add to this, if they are in the home care system, they travel on their own time. A PSW who works in Algoma-Manitoulin may have to travel hundreds of kilometers every few weeks. Often in poor weather and bad road conditions, this is many hours of unpaid work.
Personal Support Workers have an essential role in providing care for some of the most vulnerable neighbours and they deserve to be paid a decent, living wage. New Democrats have called for fixing our healthcare system: that starts with respecting PSWs.
As we head into the holidays many people across the north will be travelling to visit family and friends over the next few weeks. As we know the conditions of the roads in the north are often very dangerous and sometimes poorly maintained. First, I urge you to drive with caution and take your time; in addition we want to hear from you about the conditions on the roads you are travelling on.
New Democrat MPPs once again have launched the Northern Road Report because it became clear that northern roads were not being cleared properly and on time and the Ministry of Transportation was ignoring the problem. Thousands of northerners sent us tips on uncleared roads in past years which we then presented to the Ministry of Transportation.
It is due to your participation and New Democrats work that the Ministry finally announced that it was increasing its budget for road clearing and that it had bought new equipment.
Northerners need to make sure that the Minister actually follows through this winter. Your continued participation is important; please continue sending instances on bad road conditions to our northernroadreport@gmail.com address.
As always, please feel free to contact my office about these issues, or any other provincial matters. You can reach my constituency office by email at mmantha-co@ndp.on.ca or by phone at 705-461-9710/1-800-831-1899.
MPP Michael Mantha,
Algoma-Manitoulin
