Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Emily Langdon knows that underpaid public health nurses could soon end up helping her community
From her perch in a Toronto hospital’s emergency department, a nurse’s mind is like a highway colliding with a few stuck-up cars.
“You have no idea what’s going on in that intensive care room or the palliative care room,” says Emily Langdon, who spends her days serving residents and hospitalised patients.
“It’s challenging at times, but it’s so rewarding when you can do something that will actually make a difference to people’s lives.”
Staff in Canada’s largest province are among the lowest paid in the developed world.
Decades of underfunding and a lack of market-based bargaining have led to continued underpayment for nurses in hospitals and medical clinics across the country.
A leaked federal report that outlines compensation plans for nurses across Canada’s 12 hospital boards suggests nurses in Ontario should be in line for a 4% to 6% pay rise, depending on seniority.
Nurses in Ontario’s two largest hospitals – Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto General – are underpaid.
Linda Silas was recruited in the mid-1990s from a backstreet centre in rural Ontario and trained on that hospital’s “waiting list”.
Linda Silas started out in this backstreet centre in rural Ontario and trained there. Image caption “It’s frustrating, and it makes you almost like a temporary worker”
“I met my graduate salary when I got my first job,” she said. “It didn’t go up all the way, so I’ve had to take on a minimum of five jobs since then, and sometimes six or seven, to pay my bills.”
The money does not come as much of a surprise in Ontario, where nurses have been trying to fight against underpayment for many years. The Ontario Nurses Association says the province puts up an obstacle course of rules and regulations that effectively prevents contracts from being negotiated properly.
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“The things that are needed are the things that nurses have been advocating for a long time,” said Lina Jean, the ONA’s national president.
“You need reasonable rates of pay – we need a worker’s compensation fund. So it’s really difficult for nurses to stay. They need a raise on top of that.”
She points to a recent study that found some Ontario nurses earned less than 80% of the Canadian minimum wage.
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In their system of pay and benefits, the Canadian government has never signalled in which direction it is heading.
“When the provinces negotiate their own wages, they make concessions.
“The issues that need to be resolved have to do with the transfer from the federal government. That’s what the issue is – is that there is a floor and then there is a ceiling.
“Because the federal government, and sometimes the provinces, argue about ‘well we’re not funding our fair share of Medicaid’. So when people complain about the wage of the nurse, it’s not even about the person, it’s about the federal government.”
Ottawa does sit at the centre of Ontario’s hospital system, but the province cannot be made to intervene in private negotiations between hospitals.
David Ramsay, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, says private hospitals can be more easily squeezed to pay more.
In Ontario, nurses can be on a waiting list for years. Picture credit: Jenny Hirshink
“The smaller institutions can be more able to support better bargaining because they are more efficient with their investments,” he said.
He believes patients who go through these institutions should also be entitled to a minimum wage or a living wage, like most other Canadians who work in public hospitals.
“That is the kind of solution that is not based on using competition, but on using public policies to ensure that health care is good at all levels.”
But Ms Silas herself knows that underpaid public health nurses could soon end up helping her community. She would love to see them pushed up to a higher salary, but adds the same as for any other public servants – is not an argument for giving a sticking plaster to an underlying problem.
“It’s frustrating, and it makes you almost like a temporary worker. It’s a great feeling when you get a raise, when you’re on the ceiling, or your pay grade goes