Stop Paying the Rich; Increase Funding for Social Programs!

Defend Canada’s Caregivers!

The majority of workers providing health care, seniors care, and care and services for people with disabilities and the most vulnerable people in society are women. All of these public services and the workers who provide them are under attack from under funding, privatization and the refusal to negotiate in good faith. While professionals and others in the public health care system are mostly unionized, they are currently facing governments who seek to deprive them of all the protections they have put in place. And many caregivers work for private establishments or individuals where they are often targets of unscrupulous practices where they are left to fend for themselves as best they can. The biggest block they face, unionized or not, is their lack of control over the laws which affect their lives. They are simply kept out of the decision-making process. Thus, governments are being met with resistance to this assault on care-caregivers and women are in the front ranks of the fight. When they champion their own rights, de facto they defend the rights of all — their families, the people they care for and the society which depends on them for the services they provide.

Because they do not control the decisions which governments take, workers who provide health care, seniors’ care and social services for vulnerable children face many impediments to their work. This includes inadequate funding, unsustainable workloads and inadequate staffing. The impact on the workers and the people they care for is considerable and underscores the inhuman direction which the ruling elite have set for the economy. Solutions are needed and how to get them enforced begins when the caregivers speak out, including about their fight to uphold their right to wages and working conditions commensurate with their work and contribution to society.

So too, the experience of migrant workers, many of whom are women under the care workers program, is an indictment of Canada’s inhumane treatment of women and vulnerable people. These workers are fighting for permanent residency status on arrival in Canada. Their experience is that while the party in power may change, their temporary status remains, keeping them in a vulnerable position, with an increasing number becoming what are called undocumented workers. To blame migrant workers for all kinds of crimes such as overloading the system is a cruel and irresponsible move, given the laws which keep them as a super-exploited and oppressed section of the Canadian working class.

The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada calls on Canadians to become informed on the working conditions and fight of caregivers and what actions can be taken to defend the rights of those in need of care and those providing that care.

This article was published in:

Renewal Update No. 36, October 16, 2019

Article Link:
Stop Paying the Rich; Increase Funding for Social Programs!: Defend Canada’s Caregivers!