Bill 195 (Keeping Staff and Residents Safe)
Understandably, there have been a lot of questions asked lately about Bill 195 (Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act, 2020), specifically as it relates to our Home and Long Term Care.
I can’t speak to the intentions that are behind the legislation, or for other Homes/Hospitals and how they will apply it’s sections. I can only speak to how we have used the articles up to this point which is how we will use the sections going forward: to fill as many shifts as possible in the manner that is safest for staff and for Residents.
I’m going to try answer the most common questions that I heard recently.
Bill 195 does not take away all of your rights under your Collective Agreement – The only aspects of the CA that this Bill will affect, at Fairhaven, are the deployment of staff and, by extension, the ability to take holidays. We all know that the sector was in the middle of a Human Resource crisis before the pandemic and, in order to be able to provide an acceptable level of care, steps needed to be taken to ensure that shifts could be covered.
It is an uncommon move that has taken but the pandemic is unprecedented, in our times, and something needed to be done to ensure the health of our Residents and staff.
In essence, this order allowed Homes a certain amount of flexibility to create our “staffing bubbles” which kept employees co-horted with Residents in a specific Resident Home Area (RHA). The benefits of this arrangement have been discussed many times before; by limiting the travel not just “in and out of Fairhaven,” but also within Fairhaven which is critical as well. Staffing bubbles created a protected community within a community that is guarded against a virus in another area of the Home due to the limited amount of intra-building travel.
It has not been easy for anyone to have their holidays limited but this is our fist pandemic and we are trying to squeeze as many days in as possible for everyone. If everyone had their full holidays the Home could not function; FH appreciates this and I’m sure that Residents appreciate this as well. It truly does show a spirit of co-operation. See Fairhaven Employee COVID-19 Bulletin #46 for more information on how this emergency order extension (as used by Fairhaven), will help all of us.
The initial emergency regarding COVID-19 is over so there is no need for these measures to continue – I wish the very real threat of COVID-19 was over and that there was no need to have staffing flexibility anymore. Our immediately area is seeing some success right now, during he summer months, in largely avoiding new cases. However, how long will this streak last when the weather gets colder, students go back to school and our regular outbreak season starts? The introduction of staffing bubbles has meant a great deal of adjustment for our employees and I cannot stress enough how thankful I am that staff have given a great deal of effort to adapt to this arrangement and have expressed how proud they are to be a part of a proactive environment. To dismantle these plans, that have been put in place to shield staff and Residents from the spread of the virus, would mean a great deal of adjustment for staff, a huge amount of work for HR, and the reintroduction of everyone moving throughout the Home. If we see a second wave of any kind, the Province has noted that it would not hesitate to bring back a state of emergency/emergency orders to protect the public and those in long term care. It would simply be too early to come out of our defensive position against COVID-19 when we know we will see more cases in the coming months.
The Bill will allow Fairhaven to turn PSW’s into Housekeepers and move anybody from one department to another – We have are not going to turn PSWs into housekeepers. We need more PSWs. The legislation allow us to bring in people, temporarily, to disinfect (which keeps us healthy), to porter people so floor staff do not need to, to form staffing bubbles to dramatically decrease the possibility of cross contamination when COVID cases begin again in this area, etc. We will not be moving people between Departments. I acknowledge that it would be possible for some other Homes or Hospitals to take this legislation and go further but we won’t be at Fairhaven; we just need the staffing flexibility to eliminate, as much as we can, the spread of the coronavirus. Waiting until the community has several new cases is simply too late because the dismantling and reintroduction of staff cohorting is highly labour intensive and, like in Kingston, if a flare up occurs quickly, it could be too late.
We don’t have any say in any of this – Since the worldwide pandemic started, I have felt the same way at times: working weekends to scrape together a good inventory of PPE; being told, with virtually no notice that family visits would start; mandated pandemic pay starting without any clear guidelines (which we started anyway); screening guidelines that, at times, seemed to change almost daily; It has been a struggle to keep up with everything that has come our way. However, I know that Fairhaven, as a group, has taken all of these changes, that none of us really didn’t have a lot of say in, and responded with a great collaborative effort to get in an excellent defensive position against the virus. We need to keep this going to ensure that we all stay safe.
Please consider all Fairhaven COVID-19 Employee Bulletins to be official notifications of consultation with the Fairhaven Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee.
Lionel Towns, CPA, CMA
Executive Director
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