Dear Editor:
I have been out of town and this is my first chance to respond to your front-page article concerning the coming layoffs at Inglewood Care Centre (Jan. 27).
It is outrageous that the owners of Inglewood, Unicare, keep changing the subcontractors who provide their service personnel and, in doing so, allow these various subcontractors to lay off workers. I have learned that although this practice happens more often at Inglewood, it has happened before in care centres in the Lower Mainland.
This is an unspeakably cruel practice.
Why would any employers cause their workers so much anxiety? All people deserve the security that comes with knowing they will to be able to feed themselves and their families, to live in decent housing, and to have the means to flourish in the roles they have taken in life.
This requires job security and in the Lower Mainland it requires good wages.
The wage levels of 20 years ago are grossly insufficient. Further, this practice of laying off good workers just to turn around and hire another group of people, demonstrates no recognition of these needs.
Instead, business thinking and business values, focused on the bottom line, puts members of our community at risk — adding to the employees’ plight, it is outrageous to undermine the well-being of the elderly clients by removing their regular caregivers, especially when they already face so much loss in the last stage of their lives. But this issue does not end with Unicare.
Why is Vancouver Coastal Health allowing Carecorp to provide human services when it is clear that Carecorp, first and foremost, focuses on their company’s profit-creating abilities?
What about Carecorp’s responsibility for the people who work for them, the clients they serve and the larger community?
Further, for decades now, provincial governments have been undermining workers and seemingly somehow forgetting employees are also citizens.
The loss of protection against contracting out is based on an ideological position that fails to acknowledge the growing discrepancy between those “well off” and those who live with financial insecurity.
B.C. generates the wealth to care for every one of its citizens. In today’s reality, too often, people work more than one job because their wages are too low or they work long hours because their jobs are often at risk if they don’t take on extra work. This group includes many of the middle class.
This lack of protection and concern for workers surely is based on the view that some people are less valuable than others, a view which is abhorrent and goes against the values Canada supposedly champions in its institutions.
Kathryn Cholette
North Vancouver
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