Nursing home workers’ union opposes Horizon hiring scheme

The union representing nursing home workers in New Brunswick says the provincial government plans to staff a nursing home in Sussex with higher-paid employees from Horizon Health Network.

The health authority described its plan as a “temporary measure” meant to take pressure off hospitals by moving some seniors into vacant beds at the Kiwanis Nursing Home.

But the New Brunswick Council of Nursing Home Unions (NBCBHU) says the plan would end up “creating confusion and worsening the inequalities within an already overburdened system.”

Meanwhile, an administrator at Kiwanis Nursing Home says plans are already underway to bring in workers from overseas who will become members of the NBCBHU, opening up some of those long vacant beds.

The provincial government didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.

NBCBHU’s collective agreement expired in October 2022, and union president Sharon Teare said negotiations are at a standstill after the Higgs government forced thousands of unionized public sector workers into shared-risk pensions last year.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Teare said there are currently 200 vacant nursing home beds in New Brunswick due to understaffing, while more than 1,100 seniors wait for a spot.

She said the plan to open beds in the Sussex nursing home by bringing in Horizon employees is a “band-aid solution” that won’t address underlying staffing shortages linked to low wages.

“This government is willing to pay Horizon staff more to care for nursing home residents, but they won’t pay our dedicated nursing staff a living wage,” Teare said.

The nursing home workers’ union, with roughly 4,600 members at 51 nursing homes across the province, is part of the larger Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The Horizon workers would likely be from a separate CUPE local, the New Brunswick Council of Hospital Unions.

Those workers are also underpaid, Teare said, yet they earn more than nursing home workers.

“This is a clear sign that the money is there,” she said. “Premier Higgs has continuously chosen not to spend it on nursing home workers.”

Nursing home workers earn an average of $21.79 per hour, according to the NBCBHU. That falls below living wage estimates for all major New Brunswick cities.

The Horizon employees would likely include Patient Care Attendants who are among the “lowest paid classification” in health care, at $25.10 per hour, according to Teare.

She called the proposed hiring scheme at the Sussex nursing home “unprecedented” and warned that it could become a pattern in other locations.

‘They’re underpaid,’ says Kiwanis admin

In 2016, the provincial government expanded the number of beds at Kiwanis Nursing Home from 70 to 100, but one quarter of those beds are currently vacant because of understaffing, nursing home administrator Christine Corbett told the NB Media Co-op on Thursday.

“We’ve never been able to staff them,” she said, noting that it’s a struggle to attract people to work in the nursing home sector with current wages, especially in a small town like Sussex. “They’re underpaid, it’s hard work mentally and physically, and it’s hard to recruit people,” she said.

The nursing home has its own recruitment strategy underway, separate from the Horizon plan.

Kiwanis staff were part of a recent recruitment mission to the Philippines, where the nursing home able to hire 20 full-time trained health workers who will become part of the NBCNHU, Corbett said. That will allow the nursing home to open more beds. “We’re awaiting their arrival,” she said.

Corbett stressed that the understaffing problems are systemic throughout the sector. Several other nursing homes participated in the recruitment mission in the Philippines, along with government officials.

She expressed sympathy for NBCBHU’s concerns, saying the community-based nursing home has a good relationship with the union.

The New Brunswick government has increasingly looked overseas to deal with labour shortages, but efforts to recruit workers from global south countries like the Philippines have been met with criticism from labour leaders who say it leaves those countries worse off and fails to address low wages at the root of staff shortages.

Millions of Filipinos seek work overseas to support their families, as conditions in the Southeast Asian country are marked by poverty and human rights violations, notably violence against trade unionists.

As for the Horizon hiring scheme, those discussions are in the hands of the New Brunswick Association of Nursing Homes, she said. The NB Media Co-op has reached out to the association for comment but received no response by Friday afternoon.

Horizon responds

Horizon Health Network didn’t make anyone available for an interview but provided a statement on Thursday attributed to Horizon President and CEO Margaret Melanson.

Melanson noted that hospitals are currently under “significant and chronic capacity challenges, largely driven by an increase in the number of acute care beds occupied by patients no longer requiring hospital care and whose needs would be better met in a long-term care setting.”

She continued: “At a given time, approximately 35 per cent of all Horizon acute care beds are being utilized by this vulnerable cohort of patients, many of whom are seniors. This situation, as we know, has a clear and direct impact on patient flow in our hospitals and access to vital services like emergency care and surgeries.”

She said the proposed arrangement at Kiwanis Nursing Home would be temporary.

“As a temporary measure to help ensure these patients can receive the right care in the appropriate setting, Horizon is seeking to partner with Kiwanis Nursing Home in Sussex to utilize and staff 25 long-vacant beds,” she said.

A Horizon spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to query about how the international recruitment efforts at Kiwanis squares with the health authority’s plans.

Workers using food banks

On Wednesday, the NB Council of Nursing Home Unions underlined the problem of poverty-level wages for care workers.

Teare said that some nursing homes now have “community cupboards — essentially “in-house food banks” that employees use to help make ends meet. “I heard yesterday, they’re actually utilizing both the public food bank and the workplace food banks,” she said.

At $21.79 per hour, the average nursing home worker earns less than a living wage in all three major New Brunswick cities.

A living wage is generally defined as the amount needed to cover basic needs and to live with dignity while enjoying a basic quality of life. That’s $22.75 per hour Moncton, $24.50 per hour in Fredericton and $23.35 in Saint John, according to 2023 estimates from the Human Development Council.

Nursing home workers’ wages barely met that threshold in Bathurst, where a living wage was $21.65 per hour in 2023. The Human Development Council doesn’t currently calculate living wages for Sussex.

In a statement, the NBCBHU published a list of multi-million dollar budget surpluses produced by the Higgs government since he came to office in 2018, compared to average wage increases for nursing home workers during that time. Those raises were lower than 50 cents annually.

For example, when the province announced a $408 million surplus in 2021, nursing home workers received an average increase of 45 cents. Wages haven’t increased at all this year or last year due to the expiry of the collective agreement.

The union is calling on the province to raise nursing home workers’ wages by $9 per hour over the course of a four-year contract.

CUPE has frequently been at loggerheads with the Higgs government over austerity wages, with tensions coming to a head in 2021 with a 16-day strike involving some 22,000 public sector workers.

This story was updated at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Sept 19, 2024 to include information from Horizon Health Network and Kiwanis Nursing Home. It was updated with more details on Sept. 20, 2024 at 3:45 p.m.

David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).