‘People are so stressed’

Continuing care assistants rally across N.S. in CUPE’s Day of Action

NORTH SYDNEY — It didn't take Wendy Morrison long to realize something was amiss at the Northside Community Guest Home.

Morrison is a continuing care assistant at the North Sydney guest home. She began working there just five months ago. On Tuesday, Morrison joined about two dozen of her colleagues in front of the Queen Street facility where they took part in CUPE's province-wide “Day of Action” in support of longterm care and community services.

The participants held placards, chanted slogans and waved at passing motorists, most of who responded by honking their horns in support. All the while, Morrison stood beside her more veteran colleagues in front of the 144bed facility that also includes an attached 25-unit enhanced housing apartment building.

“Once I started working there, it didn't take long for me to realize that things weren't good,” she said.

“People are so stressed, so overworked, people are getting hurt because you can't work properly when you are exhausted. It's scary and I don't know what's going to become of it if things don't change.”

Morrison, who was hired as a casual continuing care assistant (CCA) in early summer, said she's been working 80-plus hours a week since she started.

“We are so short-staffed and so over-worked that we can't keep anybody. I am at the bottom of the list and after me there is nobody. We need help. It's hard work, back-breaking work,” said the Sydney Mines resident, who worked in a number of group homes before becoming a CCA.

“The residents are really suffering. Their care needs are being met, but there's no time for anything extra, no time for conversations, no time to give them the time they need at this stage in their life. We need to have more time to give them the compassion and the care and the love they deserve.”

Morrison's more senior co-workers say the situation has been getting increasingly worse over the past few years.

Fellow CCA and CUPE 1876 president Wanda Bond has been on the job for 25 years. She said she loves what she does, but that more help is urgently needed. And they are calling on the recentlyelected Tim Houston-led government to take immediate action to support long-term care residents and the people who look after them.

“Long-term care is in crisis

mode right across the province. We have staff who are so burned out they can't even do overtime anymore. We are over-worked, under-paid and under-staffed,” said Bond.

“We can't give 100 per cent to the residents and it seems we are short-staffed almost every day. And when we are short-staffed it affects everything, it affects every department, and it leaves the residents suffering. We want more feet on the floor, we need more people, we need more help.”

According to Bond and other continuing care assistants, the problems have become exacerbated due to the job's growing reputation as

being difficult and exhausting.

“We've seen some really good CCAs just up and quit and move on to lower-paying jobs with no benefits because it's just too difficult, it's just too demanding,” said Bond.

“Nobody wants to take the CCA program and the way things sit now I can understand why. It's a hard job, it's very, very difficult. We meet almost every need that they

have and when we are short we just can't meet all of their needs and things slip through the cracks.”

The CCAs suggest there needs to be an incentive to get more people into the program that are offered at Nova Scotia Community (NSCC) campuses across the province and at the CBBC Career College in Sydney.

CUPE's “Day of Action”

involved more than 20 rallies across Nova Scotia, including a number on Cape Breton Island. Along with the North Sydney rally, similar events were held in front of Progressive Conservative MLA Brian Comer's Sydney River office, at Seaview Manor in Glace Bay, in St. Peter's at the old Irving parking lot and at the Royal Canadian Legion in Inverness.