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Cranford, C. (2004, August 17). Security without Flexibility: Personal Care Workers and People with Disabilities in Ontario. Paper presentation at the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the efforts of personal care workers to gain security through unionization and its impact on people with disabilities. I draw on a case study of the dominant model of service delivery in Ontario – delivery by non-profit organizations contracted to the government – using policy analysis and key informant interviews. The paper is organized into three sections. The first section describes the interpersonal and intermittent nature of personal care work, and the two vulnerable groups engaged in care work: racialized women and men as workers and people with disabilities as clients/consumers. Section two outlines the difficulties of organizing personal care workers under an industrial labour relations regime, including the need to establish than an organization, rather than an individual, is the employer and structural problems due to the fact that collective bargaining legislation is based on the norm of a direct and continuous, employment relationship with one employer where the work is performed at a single, formal worksite. Moving to the case study, section three focuses on how part-time, shift and on-call workers have won fair wages, extended benefits and the ability to enforce fair labour standards by joining Local 40 of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) yet highlights how the industrial labor relations regime does not fit well with the demands of people with disabilities for a more flexible delivery of services. This case illustrates the need for a new labour relations regime that can bring security with flexibility to both workers and clients/consumers.
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