We are stronger together. That’s the entire idea behind a union. Whether you’re a homecare worker, a community health worker, or a mental health and addiction worker – all workers deserve to be treated well and paid fairly.
Home care workers, in particular, need a strong union in your corner. The job is demanding. The burnout is real. And the pay is low. Workers are leaving the sector in droves, pushed out by poor wages and stressful working conditions.
A union with experience in the home care sector can advocate for your needs. CUPE is the union for home care workers, representing home care workers in agencies across the province that have successfully fought for:
- Job Security: CUPE workers have successfully pushed back against contracting out, ensuring workers don’t lose their jobs or hours, and securing advance notice of any technological changes so workers can prepare and defend their jobs.
- Labour Management Committee: Labour Management Committees give workers an ongoing voice in the workplace between collective bargaining periods and allow workers to raise and collaborate on solutions to important issues, including workload, training, and operations.
- Improved Workload: CUPE workers have secured protection against excessive workloads, allowing workers to request formal reviews and for the Union to take the issue to the Labour Management Committee.
- Respect for Seniority: Seniority provisions ensure that opportunities are awarded to workers who have developed their skills and experience. CUPE workers have enshrined seniority language in terms of layoffs, promotions, and transfers, creating a fair and equitable system, as opposed to one that pits workers against each other.
- Paid Leaves: CUPE workers have fought for the right to take leave for several reasons:
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- Bereavement leave for the loss of a loved one
- Maternity, parental and adoption leave
- Education leave allowing workers to take courses or upgrade skills
- Union leave for elected members
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- Fair Job Postings: Home care agencies with CUPE workers have more fair and transparent posting and hiring processes, including trial periods and a right for workers to return to former positions.
You deserve these benefits. You deserve a collective voice and the power to improve your working conditions.
At CUPE, you are the union. You and your coworkers set the priorities. You elect your leaders. You determine what issues to push for at the negotiating table. And you do it all with world-class support from a team of legal experts, researchers, communicators, and organizers.
You will soon have the chance to vote on which union will represent all WTCHS workers. Choose CUPE.
A Case Study of CUPE Home Care Workers
CUPE represents workers at home care workers at Senior Peoples Resources in North Toronto (SPRINT).
At SPRINT, being unionized with CUPE has helped home care workers make important gains, including:
- Access to the Multi-Sector Pension Plan, a union-sponsored pension plan. The employer contributes 2% of wages to pension coverage.
- A comprehensive benefits package to which the employer contributes the equivalent of six percent (6%) of an Employee’s annual regular salary.
- 2 additional paid ‘floater’ holidays per year.
- The ability to collectively bargain regular and meaningful wage increases.
- Language to ensure that union members don’t suffer a reduction in their regular hours of work, be laid off, or terminated as a result of the Employer contracting out any of its work or services, using volunteers, or using non-bargaining unit employees.
- A permanent, joint labour-management committee to discuss ongoing workplace issues.
- Language to protect against arbitrary dismissal or discipline.
- Up to 5 weeks of paid vacation for senior staff, with an ability to carry over up to 2 additional weeks from the previous year.
- Accumulated paid sick days calculated at 1 ½ days per month (or 18 per year) for full time employees.
- Personal Support Workers receive one half-hour of paid travelling time between assignments during a shift.
- A travel allowance of fifty-four ($0.54) cents per kilometre for the first five thousand (5000) kilometres and forty-eight cents ($0.48) for every kilometre thereafter and full reimbursement for all parking expenses.
- WSIB coverage for all employees.
- A pay equity plan to ensure equal pay between genders.
