THUNDER BAY - Senior administration at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre is calling on the provincial government to make pandemic pay more inclusive.
In an open letter sent to Premier Doug Ford and the Ministry of Health, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre president and CEO, Jean Bartkowiak, commended the government’s implementation of pandemic pay, but says it needs to be more inclusive.
“Providing the highly deserved Pandemic Pay is the right thing to do,” the letter reads. “However, it is the collective belief of this hospital’s Senior Leadership Council that the Pandemic Pay should be awarded as inclusively as possible.”
The provincial government implemented pandemic pay to provide additional relief to front-line healthcare workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Hourly wages can be increased by $4 as well as an additional lump sum payment of $250 for 100 hours worked during a four-week period.
Those eligible for pandemic pay working in a hospital setting include personal support workers, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, attendant care workers, auxiliary staff such as porters, cooks, custodians, housekeeping, and laundry, as well as developmental service workers, mental health and addictions workers, respiratory therapists, paramedics, and public health nurses.
But Bartkowiak said it is still not entirely clear who can qualify for the pandemic pay, with some staff such as frontline managers, lab technicians, imaging technicians, and medical device and reprocessing staff, not eligible.
“The letter is mostly intended to advise or suggest government as they did for long-term care, there shouldn’t be any discrimination between any groups of employees,” Bartkowiak said. “If it’s good for nurses, it should be good for all the staff.”
The letter states that all staff in a hospital setting work closely together as a team and are exposed to the same risks.
“The exclusion of certain groups from this well-intentioned recognition has generated divisiveness and disengagement within our Hospital and community at a time when unity is needed more than ever before,” the letter reads.
Bartkowiak used the example of a phlebotomist, someone who works at drawing, testing, and researching blood, working along side a nurse on the same patient.
“If phlebotomist is assigned to draw blood on a patient doesn’t have access to the $4 an hour, but works side by side with a nurse who does other tasks at the bedside of the same patient so that is creating an issue,” he said.
Union leaders have also raised concerns about some staff members not receiving pandemic pay, but Bartkowiak said this was not a decision of the hospital.
Bartkowiak added other hospital associations across the province are raising similar concerns and looking for clarification.
“There are a lot of frontline workers in other sectors, not just in healthcare, that are in contact with potentially infected patients and should qualify for that kind of recognition,” he said. “So I am adding my voice to others in the province to praise the government for that initiative but also highlight that other people should qualify the same as long-term care home staff and nurses.”
