On the Move and Working Alone: Policy Implications of the Experiences of Unionised Newfoundland and Labrador Homecare Workers

Abstract

Home care work is female-dominated, generally precarious, and takes place in transient and sometimes multiple workplaces. Home care workers can engage in relatively complex employment-related geographical mobility (E-RGM) to, from, and often between work locations that can change frequently and are remote from the location of their employer. Like other precarious workers, home care workers may be more likely to experience work-related health and safety injuries and illnesses than non-precarious workers. Their complex patterns of E-RGM may contribute to the risk of injury and illness. This paper explores patterns of E-RGM and ways they influence the risk of injury and illness among unionized home care workers living and working in two regions of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) on Canada's east coast. It uses Quinlan & Bohle's pressure, disorganization, and regulatory failure (PDR) model to help make sense of the vulnerability of these workers to occupational health and safety (OHS) risks. The study uses a qualitative, multi-methods approach consisting of semi-structured interviews and a review of government and home care agency policies, as well as 20 NL home care collective agreements. It addresses two main questions: What are the work-related health and safety experiences of interviewed NL unionized home care workers? How do policies (government and home care agency) and collective agreements interact with E-RGM to mitigate or exacerbate the OHS challenges confronting these workers? Findings show that these workers experience numerous work-related health and safety issues many of which are related to working in remote, transient, and multiple workplaces. While collective agreements mitigate some health and safety issues, they do not fully address particular OHS risks associated with working alone,

Assessing the Relative Impact of Diverse Stressors among Public Safety Personnel

“…Substantial difficulties were also reported with most operational stressors (i.e., mean scores from 2.21 to 4.14 out of 7), such as working alone at night and fatigue associated with shift work and over-time. These types of stressors were identified as potentially problematic in previous research conducted in other occupations [69][70][71].…”

Precarious Employment and Difficult Daily Commutes

“…Our study contributes to the small body of empirical research that has addressed the relationship between precarious employment and geographical mobility (Bohle et al, 2004;Zeitinoglu et al, 2004;MacDonald, 2009;Access Alliance Multicultural Health, 2011;Wilson et al, 2011;Fitzpatrick and Neis, 2015;Premji and Shakya, 2016), and to the growing number of studies that have looked at how changes in the nature of employment is necessitating increased mobility from workers (Newhook et al, 2011;Haan et al, 2014). To our knowledge, ours is one of only two empirical studies that have specifically focused on the multiple and complex ways in which precarious employment impacts daily commutes (Fitzpatrick and Neis, 2015), and the only one to have done so in an urban context. While most Canadian studies on employment-related geographical mobility to date have focused on mobile occupations, ours brings to light the fact that non-transient occupations can have an important mobility component, not only because of where the work is located, but because of how it is organized.…”

“…As MacDonald (2009) has argued, precarious employment has an inherent spatial dimension. This dimension has been highlighted, to a limited extent, in studies conducted among precariously-employed workers, which found that holding multiple jobs or working in split-shifts, at night or in varying locations, increased commuting time and transportation expenses and resulted in unsafe journeys to and from work (Bohle et al, 2004;Zeitinoglu et al, 2004;Fitzpatrick and Neis, 2015;Premji and Shakya, 2016). Dimensions of mobility have also been incorporated in conceptual models of the impacts of precarious employment.…”

Intersecting Policy Contexts of Employment-Related Geographical Mobility of Healthcare Workers: The Case of Nova Scotia, Canada

“…Scholars from across disciplines are paying increasing attention to ERGM and relevant theoretical perspectives in various sectors (Cresswell et al 2016;Green 2004;Haan et al 2014). The literature on the migration and mobility of healthcare workers both globally (for example, Kingma 2006;OECD and WHO 2010;OECD 2008) and locally (Fitzpatrick and Neis 2015) is also flourishing. These studies point to a variety of challenges and concerns arising from the ERGM of healthcare workers, ranging from braindrain, labour shortages and surpluses, and de-skilling, to the isolation and exclusion faced by foreign workers, as well as the specific vulnerabilities associated with healthcare work in the domestic sphere, as faced by home care workers.…”

“…ERGM-related occupational health and safety concerns for healthcare workers arise particularly in home care. Fitzpatrick and Neis (2015) note that musculoskeletal disorders, the potential for facing violence and abuse (verbal, physical or sexual), and exposure to communicable diseases and allergens are common. They draw attention to how " [v]iolence in these workplaces is under-reported, and is often tolerated by workers when the clients have dementia" (Fitzpatrick and Neis 2015: 49).…”