The Hospital Employees’ Union filed a recent submission to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services Budget Consultation 2026, making recommendations to improve seniors’ care and workers’ rights.
In its submission, HEU called on government to standardize working and caring conditions in the sector to address recruitment and retention challenges, promote continuity of care, and relieve workers from taking on multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
The union also encouraged government to hire and train more seniors’ care workers and preserve the wage-levelling provisions implemented during the pandemic.
HEU also recommended standardizing benefits across public and private sector work sites; ensuring all seniors’ care workers have access to 18 or more paid sick days per year and are enrolled in the Municipal Pension Plan.
These goals, says the union, can be accomplished by bringing all seniors’ care workers under one common collective agreement.
The written submission also calls for more transparency and accountability for private operators, a government commitment to build more public long-term care homes, a reporting practice to monitor targeted direct care hours and staffing levels, and the elimination of contracting out or subcontracting.
To tackle staffing shortages and improve job security, the union recommends workers have the ability to port years of service when moving from one area of health care to another, as well as creating more full-time positions, expanding the Health Care Access Program, providing more mentorship opportunities, and recruiting more Indigenous workers to improve cultural safety practices in health care and create more career opportunities for Indigenous workers.
These recommendations will be considered by the committee as the provincial government plans its 2026 budget projections.