Field visits by phone, locked-up PPE flagged by nursing home staff in 1st wave, documents show – CBC
As the COVID-19 pandemic began, long-term care staff were voicing concerns to Ontario’s Ministry of Labour
Oct 07, 2021
When the surge of COVID-19 cases began to hit long-term care homes in the spring of 2020, nursing home workers were calling Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development to blow the whistle on unsafe working conditions, according to documents obtained by CBC News.
In response, the ministry, tasked with ensuring the safety of workers in the province, advised its inspectors to conduct field visits by phone — even as outbreaks in long-term care facilities multiplied.
“I feel that they let us down,” said a worker from a Revera-run nursing home, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.
“If they would have actually been able to come in and see the environment that we were working in, and see how people were suffering, they would have seen the health and safety inadequacies that were happening.
