COVID-19 Control: Nothing as Straightforward as Could be Hoped

"I lose sleep over this daily. Everybody needs the money. It's really discouraging because I know what's going to happen."                                                                  "I know that as soon as those schools open ... that these elderly and vulnerable people are going to start dying again."                                                              "We're all really scared for these people that we support."                                   Unnamed woman working in developmental services sector

"[There are no rules] prohibiting staff from working in external locations, and we have not received any direction from public health or the ministry that this measure should be taken."                                                                                            "According to legal advice received, we are unable to impose these types of restrictions on employees in the absence of a specific public-health directive."  Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Laura Walton,  custodial staff on casual supply lists. (CBC)

"We have raised it [with the ministry], and said, 'What do we do'? At this point, there doesn't seem to be any indication."                                       "This is an indication of just how low-paid these jobs are. For far too long, this government and previous governments have chosen to balance books on the backs of public services ... And I think, as a result, they're a little bit more hesitant to actually address the issue that they know they themselves have created."                                             Laura Walton, president Ontario School Board Council of Unions

"Our staffing situation is critical right now, and it is the thing that keeps us up at night."                                                                                                                   "[With temporary solutions to LTC staffing shortages winding down, the] pandemic pay [wage boost --] anything that takes any more people out of our system just makes us that much more vulnerable."                                                                     Donna Duncan, CEO, Ontario Long-Term Care Association 

"You can't blame the individuals, who are simply trying to cobble together a living [wage]. It's something that's very difficult for us to tackle other than to advocate for an increase in pay that would prevent them from having to double up on work in that fashion."                                                                                                       "There needs to be a solution that safeguards students, safeguards the people in the other congregate-care settings, safeguards the families that these people go home to, but doesn't punish the individuals by depriving them of the ability to make a living."                                                                                                                    "It would be absolutely irresponsible for anybody to stick their head in the sand when this issue has been raised."                                                                            Harvey Bischof, president, Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation

A custodian cleans a classroom in Brubaker Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa. Not having enough staff to clean and maintain Ontario public schools was an issue even before COVID-19, according to the Ontario School Board Council of Unions. (Charlie Neibergall/The Associated Press)

It is a problem with menacing ramifications. The huge death rate out of long-term care institutions during the first wave of the coronavirus sweeping through Canada resulted from conditions in the homes where residents shared sleeping facilities, bathroom facilities, where distancing was difficult to achieve, where an alert and preparations to control the contagion were absent, where personal care personnel were improperly trained, and often brought the virus with them into the homes unaware that they were infected, and the result was a high mortality rate among the vulnerable inmates, elderly and health-impaired.

Now, suddenly, with the re-opening of schools as a new school year presents itself next week, the focus is on school custodians and other support employees of schools who spend the school day supporting students in a vital job that is low-paid. In contrast school teachers themselves make a truly handsome salary in compensation for their vital job teaching students. Education costs are sky-high, a major portion of which is dedicated to teaching staff salaries. Their unions never stop agitating for wage increases. The situation is one of injustice, the difficult and vital work of teaching aides and custodians fails to be adequately financially compensated.

One can imagine the horrified response of someone like Mr. Bischof should government, careful of tax dollars, recommend that teachers be satisfied with their munificent salaries to allow lesser-paid employees of equal merit in their positions to be offered a long-overdue increase in their salaries. Which could result in those low-paid employees no longer feeling it necessary to head out to another job after school closes for the day, to augment their school board salaries to make up for a living wage.

Dr. Christopher Labos says there is little value in testing every child for the coronavirus before school starts and he speaks to concerns about keeping kids apart in the classroom.

Now, alarm bells are pealing as schools are resuming in an atmosphere of doubt and fear, with parents on tenterhooks, having to return to work and grappling with the options open to them; continue home-schooling and forego that career (obviously mothers) or send the child back to school and hope for the best. In either instance, as long as the coronavirus remains a threat grandparents can no longer be counted on for after-school care. The 'bubble' that worked well in the past few months has been pricked in the face of social distancing problems as children converge on their schools.

Suddenly the very real impact of separation and care have met head on; and the possibility of COVID-19 transmission through concurrrent employment in education and congregate care has come to the fore, even if a little late in the game. The government of Ontario took steps in the wake of horrendous deaths at retirement and long-term care homes to ensure that workers would adhere to new guidelines mandating that they work at only one such home rather than as in the past trying to supplement incomes incommensurate with their roles, to provide a living wage.

That having been made clear, that going from one home to another turned out to be a contagion-nightmare, failed to take into account that the measure was specific to the homes, nowhere mentioning the situation whereby those working in school settings seek to top up their income by working as well in long-term care and retirement homes, among the vulnerable, setting the stage for the previous massive death toll where Canada's entire death rate due to COVID was 82 percent represented by the steep mortality rate seen in such homes.

The restrictions relate to working in more than one retirement or long-term care home. Nothing in it addresses the likelihood of a worker seeking employment in areas outside health care, such as education. Workers with jobs in both areas now present as an entirely new headache, one not readily solved other than to deprive low-paid education workers with the opportunity to top up an inadequate wage with taking a second job in a field of medical and long-term care badly in need of workers.

The situation where daily death rates in long-term and retirement homes shocked the public and led governments throughout the country to pledge to solve the problem resulted in a stabilization. And that situation is now on the cusp of resurging. The executive director of Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills considers the situation 'challenging'. The group operates eight residential group homes employing close to two hundred front-line staff asking of them that any who will plan to work for a school board inform them. And should an outbreak of COVID-19 occur at a school, immediate updates would be required.