Articles
- The Justice for PSWs strike and OPSWA “betrayal”
- OPSWA and its corporate friends
- Time to care? OPSWA’s inconsistency on LTC care standards
- OPSWA, self-regulation and the Ontario PC Party
- Does OPSWA really represent 49,000 members?
- OPSWA’s governance structure: A family affair?
- Blocked: OPSWA and its critics
- OPSWA’s social media misinformation
Introducing the investigation
The enormous loss of life in Canada’s nursing homes has exposed the need of great change in our healthcare system. At the centre of this crisis are the Personal Support Workers (PSW) who are the backbone of long-term care and home care, and are essential workers in our hospitals.
Underpaid and overworked when they can get the hours, PSWs in long-term care and home care have faced a chronic lack of PPE and safety protocols for infectious disease. PSWs have given their lives in this pandemic.
Who speaks for Personal Support Workers? Who fights for them and demands change?
In Ontario, where the long-term care crisis has cost us over 3,600 lives and pushed PSWs past the brink of exhaustion, the largest PSW organization is not a union, but the Ontario Personal Support Workers Association.
Why OPSWA?
At this moment, in early March 2021, the OPSWA is lobbying Doug Ford’s Ontario PC government for authority to “self-regulate” PSWs. This is a long-cherished goal of OPSWA’s founder and president, Miranda Ferrier.
On January 22, Miranda Ferrier claimed on OPSWA’s private Facebook group that her organization was in “serious talks” with the government to be granted authority to regulate PSWs.
OPSWA, which claims to represent 49,000 members, appears to be a worker-friendly organization but its record over the past decade raises many questions.
Rankandfile.ca‘s Zaid Noorsumar and Alice Chen spent several months speaking with many people in the field, including former OPSWA insiders, former and current OPSWA members and veteran PSWs. Noorsumar and Chen examined its communications, governance structure, partnerships with healthcare companies, and its ties to the Progressive Conservatives.
Rankandfile.ca is proud to publish this investigation in the interests of advancing the cause of dignity and justice for all those working and being cared for in our healthcare system.
Opswa is not the voice of Psws if any we would rather the college of nurses register us
Miranda Ferrier blocked me from her sight because I spoke out against her rediculous claims of “a masknis not necessary when working in LTC” at the start of the pandemic !”
Also , I told her she cannot t claim she speaks for us all. She had only worked a short time as a PSW, and I told her she is taking the easy way out , sitting in a chair in front of a computer , brainwashing young PSW’s.
She’s , Miranda is a Con Artist!
This is great news! I asked years ago why they would have or allow one of the LTC facilities that has a class action lawsuit against them, advertise on their website. Coincidence, I think not!
No to OPSWA!
OPSWA is a folly that many PSWs will not risk their jobs …
I rather have the college of nurses to register psws. I am a psw and work for private care agcy, we deserve to be treated as we care for the seniors with dignity.
If there was any real chance of OPSWA having any regulatory control over the PSW profession, I would leave the field. I will not have OPSWA represent me in anyway.
No to OPSWA
I will leave being a PSW if OPSWA gets to regulate PSW’S, will NOT pay the high fees!!! Will not sign EVER!!!
OPSWA has helped me tremendously as a independent PSW!!!!
So much so that you can’t post anything elaborately or with examples? That is kinda funny!
Many will leave if she tells more lies she doesn’t speak for me and never will she only wants power on the backs of psws
This woman is to me a criminal. Making money off the backs of hardworking psws.I do not and will not support OPSWA.
I have been following OPSA reading their comments and how they pull in naive PSWs. The so called 49,000, are they all paying Members. I know of a Union with over 50,000 Members. This and other Unions are fighting for us as PSWs. I am satisfied that they are doing a better job, lobbing for our interests. A for profit organization, should not be holding the registration of all PSW’s.
Absolutely No to them. She has a couple of people I know under their spell too. I saw all the Sponsors and the alarm went up right away.
we need a strong voice who will represent psw’s with knowledge, respect, and an appreciation for what we do. we need a voice who will demand to be heard and an army of people who will go to battle. we’ve been over worked (feast or famine with hours as consistencies on schedules suck) and grossly underpaid for what we do for decades! it’d be great not to have to work 2 or 3 part time jobs to be able to live comfortably!!!
NO TO OPSWA!!! ?
I will NEVER agree to be represented by OPSWA!
Jane doe, will totally destroy the essential service of PSWS, we need to go back to be registered within a nursing regulation, like it was years ago
OPSWA attempted databank accessible for any employer or person “registration of PSW” in the past which failed big time, is just one issue that proved to OPSWA ineptness. I believe there will be a large number of PSWs leave and more problems than what we have already, obtaining, training and keeping new PSW trainees .
Why in the world would we the PSW’s want this? She doesn’t speak for me either! Lies, lies and more lies. I know for a fact that if this terrible pay and terrible treatment isn’t resolved in the next 6 months, I will literally quit my job. Sick and tired of the government and it’s friends making more money than they could ever spend while we survive on welfare wages with out of pocket costs and zero pension. When you do the math it’s welfare but only we work for it! Disgusting, inhumane treatment of their own citizens is what this will be and I will not participate! Kabosh this and pay a decent wage ASAP!
I so much appreciate your words ❤, so union’s we say they are frightening for you, but when you have problems to complain about your employer you will call your union’s to help you out, ?you will never hear from them no matter how many times you call or leave messages, even us like the union’s work to favor the employers and themselves, we the P.S.Ws we work so hard take all kinds of insults, from clients, family’s of the clients and on top of that the employers, my question is those at the top should come out for one month and do what p s .w do, work with the difficulty clients for one month, can those at the top work in the environment that is hard just because you want to put food on your table and bill your bills, if everyone is a nurse or any other professional job who will be P.S.W? Look at Ford government is offering free money to train psw and they don’t want to raise paid, not even benefits for us some of took loans and we are still paying. Honestly I don’t know how they get there information that they put out there. Psw do two to three jobs just to feet in. The kind of pain injuries we get no one sees that, a psw almost get killed at work ?, they would talk about that. Union’s wake and do the right thing let the government see what they don’t see.
I do not support OPSWA. I have been a psw for many years.
Isn’t there some kind of forensic audit that can be done these grifters? They sell themselves as fighting for PSWs, but what have they accomplished? They do nothing that might offend the current PC government or their corporate donors! Big change from when the Liberals were in power, when they had nothing kind to say about the Ontario government at all. Loud critics of the Liberal Party, praise or silence for the PCs? Unknown amounts of money raised from corporate sponsors? No financial oversight? Zero accountability to their members? Yeah…this is starting to smell like fraud or political hackery to me. I feel for the poor duped PSWs following this charlatan. Someone needs to start a legitimate legal investigation here.
No to OPSWA!!! We all humans and we have full right to have good pay with full respect and support from the government.
They don’t represent hardworking PSW’s, they are in it for themselves! I’ve made several email requests, requests on social media and an instant message to Miranda regarding a breakdown of where the fees are allotted and I did not get one response back! I was a paying member and could not even get a simple response to my several request for information! Eight months of being a member and we had no access to the promised education that was a part of the fee’s. They were “still working on it. Zero transparency from a group who wants to represent thousands of PSW’s…… I think NOT.