Sudbury home care workers hit the picket lines

The province's largest home care agency is scrambling to provide care for home-bound clients in the northeast as the personal support workers represented by the SEIU go on strike.

Personal support workers with Red Cross Care Partners, a private agency affiliated with the Red Cross, are striking across the province for better pay and transportation allowances.

Louise Leesworthy has been a PSW for 10 years in Sudbury.

She said she enjoys working with her clients and making sure they are able to live at home, but Leesworthy said she can't afford to do the job for the money.

“There's no way a person could survive on $15.02 and that is the … top rate an individual makes at Red Cross Care Partners,” she said, adding they are paid 34 cents a kilometre for travel.

It falls to the employer, the Red Cross Care Partners, to care for clients during the strike.

Communications director Tanya Elliott said arrangements are being made but wouldn't say what they are.

“The safety and well-being of our clients is definitely our top priority right now,” Elliott said. “We have been working on contingency plans and we'll be making every effort to minimize any disruption in service.”

Leesworthy said her work enables people to live at home who would otherwise be in hospital. And with an aging population, she considers her work to be of increasing importance.

“We're definitely the heart of health care,” she said. “PSWs have grown to become the future of health care.”