Learn how joining the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees can make your job safer, your working conditions more fair, and can help you deliver even greater quality care to your home care clients.
You’ve been trained and certified to help Albertans with their health care needs at home. Your work allows people to avoid hospital stays, provides respite for family caregivers, and lets people stay in their homes longer. It is important for Albertans, their families, and for our health care system.
So why are some private home care providers treating you as if your work doesn’t matter?
For health care aides employed directly by Alberta Health Services, the starting pay rate is $19.92 per hour, with $0.52 per kilometer for travel, and other benefits. Licensed practical nurses start at $26.45 per hour, with the same travel rate and other benefits.
You provide home care just like AHS employees — and your employer gets its funding from AHS — so why don't you get pay and benefits like AHS employees?
By cutting corners on staff compensation, private home care providers create problems recruiting and keeping staff. This means shifts aren’t filled, and people on shift are overworked and can't provide the quality of care they want to, simply because they don’t have the time.
Home care providers are contracted and funded by Alberta Health Services. It’s not fair that you are receiving less than you're worth.
There is strength in numbers when employees like you come together to bargain collectively with private home care providers. AUPE is Alberta’s biggest health care union and gives employees the strongest voice to advocate for fair compensation and working conditions. When those are achieved, staffing issues stabilize and the quality of care you can provide your clients improves.
AUPE is Alberta’s largest union, with over 90,000 members and more than 54,000 who work in health care. AUPE believes your education, hard work, and experience are worth more than what your employer is giving you. We represent most of the unionized health care aides and licensed practical nurses working in Alberta, and negotiate the lead Auxiliary Nursing Care contract with Alberta Health Services, as well as major private care contracts with providers like Extendicare and the Good Samaritan Society.
For more information about the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, click here.