Lived Experiences of Social Unionism: Toronto Homecare Workers in the late 2000s

Abstract

This article examines workers’ experiences with a union characterized by a social unionist framing and repertoire in the political realm and bureaucratic servicing of problems in the workplace realm. It analyzes interviews with members and officials about union strategies within privatized homecare predominately provided by immigrant women in Toronto. Workers report both consensual and tense relations with clients prompting them to praise their union’s political strategies yet criticize its limited workplace support. Findings indicate the importance of framing and repertoire that connect quality work with quality care, yet indicate a complex labor process that requires more conceptual and strategic attention.

Keywords

immigration homecare work social unionism social movment unionism labor process Canada

It is well accepted that if unions are to improve workers’ conditions and challenge class and social inequalities in the face of restructuring and austerity, they must reject a narrow business unionism focused only on the workplace in favor of a more social unionism that links economic and social justice issues in the political realm. Drawing on recent Canadian work (Camfield 2013; Ross 2013), we use the term social unionism here to denote unions’ engagement with workers in framing issues and developing a repertoire that links economic and social justice, both inside and outside the workplace.¹ However, different variants of social unionism operate differently across sectors (Ross 2007); thus, obstacles to the success of social unionism remain less well known. In the public sector, which includes privatized social services, connecting quality work with quality social services through coalitions and other political organizing is a key source of workers’ power (Ross 2013). At the same time, economic and social justice issues are fused within the public sector workplace as workers directly provide services to citizens in need (Baines 2013; Cohen 2009; Hemmings 2011; Johnston 1994). Camfield (2013) argues the source of public sector workers’ power lies both in social justice coalitions outside the workplace and in democratic, militant unionism from within the workplace. In the public sector, however, both democracy and militancy at the workplace labor process level are complicated by the relationship between workers and clients. The complexity of practicing a social unionism both inside and outside the workplace is especially evident in the case of homecare work, since workplaces are also people’s home spaces (Boris and Klein 2015).

We contribute to the literature on the necessary strategies to augment workers’ power and challenge inequalities, in the workplace and beyond, by analyzing workers’ experiences with a variant of social unionism in homecare. We analyze the lived experiences of social unionism from the perspective of unionized homecare workers in Toronto. These workers provide help with nonmedical activities of daily living to elderly people in their homes. Most studies of care worker organizing analyze union strategy based on surveys, secondary documents, or interviews with union officials. As Lopez (2004) argues, such studies seek to uncover the factors that lead to organizing successes, but if organizing for greater worker power and to challenge inequalities is the goal, we also need to understand why workers support unions, or do not. Based on case studies of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) campaigns among nursing home workers in Pennsylvania, Lopez argues the success of social justice framing and repertoire rests not just on their presence or absence but on their ability to challenge workers’ lived experience of business unionism. The importance of analyzing workers’ experiences and the limitations of generalizing from this single case have been debated (Fantasia 2008; Robinson 2008; Webster 2008). We follow Lopez in focusing on workers’ lived experiences of unions as a way to analyze the obstacles unions face, but our Toronto homecare case reveals distinct difficulties and opportunities. In Canada, social unionism, often defined as a philosophy and practice of organizing workers as both wage earners and citizens, has long been considered the dominant mode of unionism (Kumar and Schenk 2006) that strengthened with the growth of the public sector (Ross 2013). Most Toronto homecare workers are represented by SEIU, for whom social unionism is the “official discourse” (Baines 2013, 84). While social union framing defines much of SEIU’s political organizing in homecare, the practice of business unionism—in bureaucratic servicing of workplace problems—is also evident here, as elsewhere in the public sector (Camfield 2013). A defining feature of business unionism is a hierarchical and bureaucratic mode of representing workers (Cranford et al. 2006, 363-65). This model contrasts with domestic worker organizing, in which participatory processes engage workers on issues spread across the arbitrary divide between a public, political realm and a private (home-workplace) one (Boris and Klein 2015; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001).

Workers’ lived experience of social unionism in Toronto homecare is shaped by unique employment and social relations. Robinson (2008) argues neoliberal restructuring explains workers’ views on and support for unions as much as the form of unionism does. Our case, like others in the broader public sector, makes visible a confluence of a more social unionism and neoliberal restructuring, including privatization and rationed funding. Furthermore, the service delivery model in this case is characterized by fractured employment relations between the state funder, employing organizations, clients, and workers—who are primarily immigrant women of color. The social relations of paid care provided in private homes is marked by a devaluation of women’s work and often racialized as the dirty reproductive labor rejected by white, native born citizens (Neysmith and Aronson 1997). The restructuring of employment relations, which exacerbates social inequalities, shapes a complex labor process where relations between workers and clients in the home-workplaces can be both consensual and tense (Birdsell Bauer and Cranford 2017). Our findings suggest there is power in social unionist political organizing, but obstacles to engaging members around issues emanating from the workplace limit that power.

Literature Review: Lived Experience of Social Unionism in Care Work

Our literature review is organized in three parts. First, we outline the fragmented homecare delivery model in Ontario. Then, we discuss the labor process of homecare work. Finally, we suggest how the model and labor process shape union organizing. In each of these sections, we draw attention to how class inequalities intersect with those of gender, immigration, and race.

The Homecare Delivery Model

This study focuses on homecare services provided to elderly people in Toronto, which are funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Ontario homecare is publicly funded but the state distances itself from responsibilities to workers by contracting services to nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Ontario’s organization of homecare differs from the well-researched Independent Provider (IP) model in California, where the client hires and fires homecare workers even though they are paid by the state (Boris and Klein 2015; Delp and Quan 2002; Walsh 2001). It also differs from Ontario Direct Funding, where disabled adults receive funding to employ their own aides, who are classified as domestic servants under labor law (Cranford 2005; Kelly 2016). Ontario homecare, by contrast, is delivered through the contract-agency model like in some U.S. states, the United Kingdom, and Ireland (Mareschal 2006; Murphy and Turner 2014; Shutes 2012). In the contract-agency model, the legal employer is the agency who hires workers and sends them to clients’ homes. But the state as funder and the client as home-workplace supervisor also influence employment conditions (Cranford and Miller 2013). Ontario homecare workers are not temporary migrant workers who come in through sponsorship by individual householder-employers, but a few workers in my sample migrated under a temporary caregiver program and had since become permanent residents, a few others worked as nannies not tied to citizenship, and even more worked in private pay, in-home elder care before entering this state-funded homecare sector. In Toronto, the contract-agency model also exists in the Independent Living and Community Services sectors that focus on people with physical and developmental disabilities, respectively, and where other unions are also organizing, but there is an important difference between these sectors and homecare, which is more influenced by neoliberal restructuring. In 1996, the Ontario government introduced managed competition allowing for-profit companies to compete with nonprofits for service provision contracts. Beginning in this period, the state rationed funding to chronic elder care, resulting in cuts to emotion work and housework, and focused instead on acute patients (Aronson 2004). Rationed funding for chronic care continues today, but some limits have been put on contracting out.

Privatization and rationing often coincide with racialization in cities with large immigrant populations, such as Vancouver, London, and New York (Chun 2016; Ness 1999; Shutes 2012). The justification of low pay for care workers through gendered ideologies that deskill and devalue women’s work is widely noted. This work is also devalued in racialized ideologies that link dirty reproductive labor with women of color (Boris and Klein 2015; Neysmith and Aronson 2007). The coupling of racialization and restructuring weakens the labor market position of workers, yet clients are also marginalized along lines of age and ability (Aronson 2004; Cranford and Miller 2013; Hickey 2012). Since both groups face significant difficulties, there could be a basis for solidarity between them, yet marginalization along different axes of inequality could also generate tensions in the labor process.

The Homecare Labor Process

The homecare labor process is distinct from one that manufactures material goods, because it is characterized by emotional work in intimate settings involving assistance with bodily needs (Armstrong and Armstrong 2004). There are a number of studies on the care work labor process within long-term residential care, hospitals, or other centralized care workplaces. These studies document a labor process where management divides care into tasks with specific time limits that can be measured and linked to efficiency targets based on speed and quantity, rendering invisible the emotion work that underpins quality care (Armstrong et al. 2009). In this context, workers often draw on an earlier developed, gendered ethic of care that fosters consensual, self-sacrificial relations with clients through unrecognized and uncompensated emotion work, although privatization and funding cuts that result in staff shortages and stress can manifest in tensions between workers and residents (Baines 2004; Cohen 2009). Home-based care work is intimate in character, and also has a unique labor process because of its place in an intimate site: the client’s home. There is no management in the home-workplaces to enforce a division of tasks, or to police workers’ emotions. Thus, the relationship between workers and clients can overshadow relations with employers and other workers (Cranford and Miller 2013).

Some studies of home-based care work that include the labor process suggest consensual relations between workers and clients stemming from a gendered ethic of care. Stacey (2011) argues homecare workers find dignity in work devalued by the state and society by developing a “caring self.” Bourgeault et al. (2010) find workers and clients share the view that a good worker is patient, compassionate, and empathetic. In home-based settings, both value a friendly or familial relationship over a “professional” (emotionally detached) one. Martin-Matthews (2007, 240) reports that 39 percent of elderly clients consider their homecare workers to be a friend and 3 percent “like family.” Yet reflecting ambiguous employment relations in the home-based contract-agency model, 27 percent view them as both friend and employee. Thus, there is a need to develop a trusting relationship, which is crucial to assisting people in intimate situations such as bathing in isolated, private homes. Developing relationships is important also because quality care work is not usually defined in terms of a discrete series of tasks, and much is negotiated in the labor process between workers and clients (Armstrong and Armstrong 2004).

Studies also identify tensions in the homecare labor process. Some tensions emanate from privatized, fragmented service delivery models. Continuity in care is a key indicator of quality but is challenging under the contract-service model. Martin-Matthews (2007) reports that elderly homecare clients have extensive difficulties getting to know, and becoming comfortable with, multiple workers. Studies reveal that homecare workers make up for rationed funding by engaging in work beyond official duties, often going over paid time, and that this is valued by clients (Cranford and Miller 2013; Neysmith and Aronson 1997). This finding is interpreted in feminist scholarship as an indicator of inequalities in power and resources that are smoothed over by women who are “conscripted volunteers” (Aronson 2004, 178).

Studies also identify tensions that do not so clearly emanate from privatization and rationing, such as those along the lines of race and gender. Martin-Matthews (2007) argues the home is a site where people’s dependencies are attended to in hidden and gendered ways. Homecare workers must work at “knowing [their] place” since their workplace is someone else’s home (Martin-Matthews, Sims-Gould, and Naslund 2010, 237). Meintel, Fortin, and Cognet (2006) find in Quebec, black workers are more likely than white ones to be pressured into doing extra work, and many workers perceive that they are being treated as servants. Bourgeault et al. (2010) find evidence of discriminatory relationships in homecare, like verbal abuse on the basis of race, accent, or English or French language fluency. Martin-Matthews, Sims-Gould, and Naslund (2010, 94) report almost half of the mostly Asian immigrant workers in their Vancouver study experience “hostility based on ethno-cultural differences.” Tellingly, all the workers in their study were unionized but did not go to the union to address these issues. Birdsell Bauer and Cranford (2017) find home-based personal care workers in Toronto’s Independent Living Model experience explicit and implicit racism from some clients, which informs their view of their union. These studies describe a similar labor process found in private sector domestic work, marked by racialized indignities whether overt racism or more covert racialization such as disrespect from client-employers who treat workers like maids (Boris and Nadasen 2008; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001). Indeed, despite differently organized service delivery models in private domestic work and contract-agency homecare, Neysmith and Aronson (1997) argue there is similar racialization in the two sectors given a similar lack of organizational and employer interventions in everyday relations in home-workplaces and a similar degree of employment insecurity due to the contract-agency model and rationed funding. In sum, existing research on the homecare labor process suggests both consensual and conflictual relations between workers and clients are at play in the labor process. The question is whether, and if so how, unions address this complex labor process hidden in home-workplaces.

Homecare Social Unionism

Scholars have identified how the intersection of public funding and service provision in home-based care delivery models shapes unions’ organizing strategies. Based on a comparison of unionization campaigns in homecare, child care, and disability support sectors across eleven U.S. states, Rhee and Zabin (2009, 969) argue success rests on combining worker organizing with two “interlinked, scale-jumping strategies” to organize dispersed workplaces: state-level policy advocacy to raise labor standards and service quality, and coalitions with clients and others to garner political support for reform. Through alliances and media campaigns, unions frame the need for unionization and better compensation as a social justice issue that recognizes women’s devalued work as a public good and improves quality care through stable services provided by committed workers (Cobble 2010; Folbre 2006). Despite similarities, different service delivery models shape union strategies in home-based work (Mareschal 2006; Rhee and Zabin 2009).

SEIU’s homecare organizing in the U.S. IP model, where the state pays but clients hire and fire, has been widely lauded (Delp and Quan 2002; Walsh 2001). In this model, advocacy first centered on creating a public employer with whom to unionize and bargain, and then on securing adequate funding for increased worker compensation and funded hours for clients. This strategy has been extended to other states with the IP model, modified to reflect political context, and has influenced home-based child care organizing (Black 2012; Brooks 2005; Mareschal 2006; Rhee and Zabin 2009). One indicator of union success was a 25 to 50 percent wage increase and health benefits, which have begun to improve quality care by lowering worker turnover among homecare workers in states with the IP model (Rhee and Zabin 2009, 973). Yet reflecting the reality that workers’ political power rests on a social unionism that includes support from stakeholders and broader publics, the union made major compromises to gain disability and senior groups’ trust and support, like yielding the right to strike.

In the contract-agency homecare model, collective bargaining has fewer legal hurdles than the IP model, but there are still challenges. The contract-agency model requires pushing for increased state funding, since unions can only legally bargain with the agency, which does not control funding. As a result, organizing homecare in the contract-agency model connects quality care and quality work in media and public framing, coupled with state-level policy advocacy and alliances with stakeholders to gain the support of broader publics. Yet it must also contend with organizational employers (Boris and Klein 2015; Rhee and Zabin 2009). The case of SEIU organizing in New York is instructive for other contract-agency homecare workers. Ness (1999, 72-73) argues due to the difficulty of recruiting and retaining reliable workers, the nonprofit homecare agencies in New York were by the late 1980s “among the most vocal proponents of improving economic conditions for homecare workers,” linking quality care with recruitment and retention through better pay. SEIU thus joined a coalition with representatives from the agencies, other unions, and community groups to pressure the state for more funding. It also used confrontational tactics with some employers, including strikes. These were political strikes in that some employers’ willingness to cooperate with SEIU rested on the stick of negative publicity and the carrot of higher funding won through political organizing (Mareschal 2006).

Another important strategy is mobilizing members to attend demonstrations, lobby politicians, or otherwise engage politically. In most homecare organizing, worker mobilization is pursued through a top-down approach (Rhee and Zabin 2009). Mareschal (2006) argues SEIU exerts power in its relationship with elected politicians in New York, given the importance of its campaign contributions, volunteer union labor, and mobilizing capacity. Analyzing the same case, Ness (1999) focuses on worker leadership, tying SEIU’s mobilization capacity to an earlier struggle over union democracy. Mobilizing homecare workers was hard since fragmented work organization and the history of their incorporation as “second class” in a hospital workers’ union meant some workers did not even know they belonged to a union. Yet this process changed workers’ view of their union and showed them the importance of mass action to target the state.

Developing leadership among care workers with centralized workplaces might seem easier, yet Lopez (2004) argues a legacy of bureaucratic servicing in SEIU can create obstacles to the worker and community mobilization necessary to develop the social justice framing and coalitions that augment worker power and challenge inequalities. He shows how a campaign against privatization was viewed by both the workers and the community as a social justice issue. In contrast, issues like such as contracting out services were viewed by both as only a union issue, resulting in no community alliance or worker engagement. As a result, the union faced paid staff who wanted to resolve problems through the legalistic grievance procedure, and workers who expected them to do so. An alternative strategy to legalistic procedures is direct action against employers in the workplace, but this would not work for home-workplaces where the direct employer is absent and clients depend on bodily assistance.

Unions of home-based workers must also overcome the organizational hurdle of dispersed workplaces, which limits the most “basic level” of worker solidarity, since homecare workers are physically separated from other workers in their union (Camfield 2013). Attempts to tackle worker separation are evident in the California IP model, which included a geographical community approach that organized house meetings and developed neighborhood committees (Boris and Klein 2015). In other contexts, unions have developed associational structures for home-based workers (Yates 2011). These associational structures addressed the fragmented organization of work and the ideological association of the home with a gendered private sphere in a way that has potential for more worker input. However, few care work studies emphasize the need for deep member involvement through leadership development. Brown’s (2009) analysis of recently privatized child care center workers is an important exception. He argues internal organizing strategies must move beyond brief or targeted member training to educational development of members that includes critical reflection. These cases point to the need to develop new strategies for developing worker leadership when workplaces are fragmented.

In some contexts, racialized tensions in homecare work are similar to those found in domestic work (Neysmith and Aronson 1997); thus, there may be insight for homecare in domestic worker organizing. The latter emphasizes organizing immigrant women around gendered and racialized injustices in the daily labor process through worker’s associations. One strategy to link the intimate realm of indignities to a broader politics of antiracism and inclusive citizenship is developing a workers’ Bill of Rights demanding respect, and such associations also develop networks among workers and foster their leadership (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Poo 2011). The focus of domestic worker organizing on racialized tensions in the labor process reflects a view that there is power in engaging workers on issues that emanate from the workplace and developing their leadership to articulate these experiences in the political realm.

This review of existing studies begs the question: how can homecare worker unions create both multiscalar organizing that develops coalitions able to connect the state as funder to agency employers, and engage members locally when workplaces are the dispersed homes of clients? This review also suggests solidarity must address tensions between workers and clients in the home-workplace labor process, if state-level alliances are to be sustained and effective. Yet most studies of care work organizing focus on the broader scale, and either assume consensual relations between workers and clients, or gloss over tensions. In contrast, given similarities between homecare and domestic work, when workers are immigrants and clients are not, there are also tensions between some workers and clients some of the time. We begin to address these complexities by analyzing an overlooked dimension in scholarship on social unionism: workers’ lived experience (but see Lopez 2004; Stacey 2011). Following Lopez, we argue that a qualitative understanding of workers’ views of their union provides insight into the obstacles unions face in forging a social unionism that augments worker power and challenges social inequalities. We analyze how homecare workers’ view of their union stems from how the union addresses the fragmented employment relations inherent in the homecare delivery model and the complex gendered and racialized relations in the homecare labor process.

Method and Context

The primary data for this article are semistructured interviews with twenty unionized homecare workers in the Greater Toronto Area conducted in 2007/2008. Reflecting demographics in the Toronto sector, the majority of homecare workers in this study are immigrant women. We asked employers interviewed in a broader study to send a letter to workers asking them to contact us if they would like to be interviewed. To minimize bias from those who would respond to this initial introduction by the employer, we also recruited through referrals from the union, other workers, and clients interviewed in the broader study, resulting in a diverse sample of those both active in their union and not. All workers are given pseudonyms.

The workers of focus in this article were members of SEIU, Local 1 Healthcare. Key informant interviews with three union officials holding important positions in organizing, research, and policy, were conducted in 2006/2007 to provide information on union structure and strategy. We also did follow-up interviews in 2017 with three high-ranking union staff in policy, organizing, and leadership development positions, to ascertain whether the claims made in this article were still relevant today: they are. We identify key informants by number. Local 1 began organizing homecare workers in the late 1980s. At the time of the initial study, the union represented six thousand homecare workers in Ontario, half of which were in the Greater Tortonto Area.

SEIU strategy targeted both the state as funder and the contract employers to improve compensation, including wages, pay for travel time, and benefits. One goal was equal compensation across homecare employers, and between homecare and institutions. Workers also gave presentations about the difficulties of traveling to multiple home-worksites and working for little pay as part of a government review of the sector, which culminated in the Caplan Report of 2005. This approach shows the state’s attentiveness to unions as a key stakeholder, yet consultation was combined with confrontational strategies. For example, the union produced a video Crisis in Homecare, sent it to elected representatives, then “stormed” their offices gaining a “captive audience” to articulate their concerns just before the Caplan Report was to be released (Union 1). Overall, informants described a varied relationship with the state that included both inside negotiations and public, confrontational engagement with the state.

The union strategy to improve compensation included a frame linking quality care to quality work, as seen in literature on care organizing. Officials recognized that “strikes are very problematic” (Union 4) in this sector, but did not support giving up the right to strike, as SEIU has done elsewhere. Since connecting workers with a public fight could affect clients, they joined with the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC), made up of unions and community advocacy associations, to run programs and campaigns against privatization, funding cuts, or other issues that benefit “not only workers but citizens” (Union 1). Alliances with seniors’ organizations—the key client group in the agency model—were “peripheral” and “haphazard,” though their value was recognized. One official said, “if we can figure out a way to preserve those relationships and try to improve the working world around the worker and the client relationship, then we’ll have accomplished something.” Yet the informant also felt the degree to which the union should involve clients in improving working conditions was a “moral and ethical” decision, and so they “kept the clients out of it” (Union 1). In short, alliances with clients were nascent, but a framing that links quality care and quality work was evident.

The union also sought to address employment insecurity by connecting contract employers to the state in a public campaign. It did not pursue a legal strategy to argue the state was the employer, but political organizing recognized that government Community Care Action Centers (CCACs) “control the work,” and thus, the state should be targeted in efforts to improve conditions (Unions 1 and 5). Union submissions and worker presentations to government consultations around the Caplan Report highlighted employment insecurity. The Caplan Report recommended extending three-year contracts with agency service providers for up to nine years, providing they met certain care standards. A significant number of contracts had been given to for-profit companies through the managed competition tendering process, and thus, freezing contracts meant relative security of for-profits, which were nearly all nonunion, in a sector previously dominated by unionized nonprofits. For-profit agencies classify workers in a casual category, where workers supposedly “elect” to take clients or not, so the union’s contribution to the Caplan Report consultations argued these workers were not “elect to work.” The Report noted problems with the elect to work classification but did not recommend revoking it (Union 5). Another difficulty in obtaining employment security was when agencies considered client preferences for or against a given worker. However, the union did not “concern [themselves] that much in getting in between the employer and the employee in their relationship” unless it was considered by the worker to be discriminatory, or if the worker’s hours were reduced considerably. The worker could then go to a steward and ask it be put on the Labor Management agenda (Union 4). This was described as a highly legalistic process that would “trigger a clause that had been negotiated in the collective agreement,” otherwise the union was not “actively involved” (Union 4).

Union informants recognized situations where client-worker relationships were strained, including cases of sexual harassment (Union 1), smoking, or violent clients (Union 5), but did not have a clear strategy to address them. When asked whether the union tried to regulate relationships between worker and clients, informants described this as a legalistic procedure that was hard to maneuver given the individual home-worksites where one might not even know her steward. As one informant said, “There’s no way, [the union’s] steward structure really can monitor [the collective agreement] unless the individual worker does phone the steward. This is unlikely to happen unless the situation is so severe you’re going through the grievance process.” But then the question is, “what kind of details do you need to make the case and make the case stick. It’s problematic, right? Because they are all one-to-one relationships” (Union 5). Despite the effort to train stewards it was recognized that “employment law is complex” (Union 5). In short, legalistic procedure, coupled with decentralized workplaces based on individual relationships, requires more intense internal organizing to involve workers in improving their own conditions. The analysis of interviews with a range of workers allows us to examine how the service delivery model and labor process shape not only union strategy but also workers’ evaluation of it.

The Lived Experience of Social Unionism in Toronto

Compensation

Members described how both the state and the agency shaped compensation, suggesting strength in a strategy that connects them. A primary source of frustration for several workers stemmed from the variation between their wages and those of personal support workers (PSWs) who worked in care institutions. Several felt the state privileged PSWs in hospitals and long-term residential care over those in homecare. Others felt their pay should be higher because the state mandated PSWs take on duties performed by nurses. Danielle, a union steward, said, “[A]s part of the health care team we are NOT compensated properly. We are not recognized as part of the health care team . . . We are doing all this complex care . . . and working alone.” Members also blamed employers for not allocating more of the state funding available to institution-based PSWs. For example, some critiqued employers for using funds on staff parties. Some felt since the state was responsible for funding homecare work, it needed to hold the agency accountable for fair distribution of funds. These sentiments are in line with the union’s framing and strategy.

Members articulated the difficulty of improving compensation when the state as funder was not at the table, but several had hope in workers’ mobilization vis-a-vis the state and employers. Chejtel said, “I know that they [the union] tried their best and they didn’t have success,” but also felt “. . . we are a little part of some BIG union.” Chejtel’s experience, and others’, suggests the need for more engagement with members at the local level within a province-wide union structure that includes PSWs in hospitals and long-term residential care. Others were less optimistic about whether the union could secure better compensation for workers because of perceived weakness of the union. Maribel described how they had fought her employer on economic issues for eleven years but had made very little progress. Leah also felt the union was weak, arguing success could be achieved if homecare workers had a stronger union, “like a nurse’s union.” Given limited success in achieving parity across homecare and institutional care, these sentiments show how union success can shape workers’ views of the union. However, Steward Danielle felt workers did not achieve much through bargaining last time around, which pushed people to participate more in union activities. Similarly, Steward Vera said workers at her agency, though skeptical at first, developed more positive attitudes toward the union once they realized it was the only organization working in their favor. These findings show how union efforts communicated by worker leaders could influence positive views of the union and more active participation, even if successful outcomes were initially limited.

Members’ views resonated with the union’s strategy to both push the state for better funding and hold employers accountable for its distribution, as described by Steward Clare:

So this is the reason why I think SEIU has . . . a little stronghold right now; that because we know this money is, I forget how [many] millions it was now . . . but it was publicized through Parliament. And they have this feeling that they can go in and really have a good fight with having a better contract this time around.

Knowledge of state funds provided the union with leverage against the employer, which gave Claire hope the union could win a better contract. However, there is also need to pressure employers. Steward Vera said,

Travel time is an important issue and [Employer 4] said that they have no money to pay for it. They don’t have money to increase hourly wages, like, no-no funds . . . Many of us, 89 percent of workers are ready to go on strike just to improve our working condition . . . And then they decided to go to our government for some financial help, so we’re waiting.

Willingness to strike contrasts with a self-sacrificial ethic reported in some of the literature and is more in line with nurses’ militancy (Briskin 2012). It also reflected limited coalitions with clients, which elsewhere required giving up the right to strike.

Some workers were open to coalitions to improve compensation, suggesting more room for alliances with clients than was evident in union strategy. May and Danielle felt such an alliance could secure more funding and more hours of work. Similarly, Maribel felt clients could “speak on [workers’] behalf” to bring more value and recognition to the job. Two stewards felt while this might be a laudable goal, it would be difficult to put into practice due to either the inability of the clients to “come out” and support workers, noted by Sarah, or the limits the agency put on getting close to clients, emphasized by Vera. This hesitation by stewards reflected the lack of union strategy of building coalitions with client groups. Some members suggested subtracting one party from the multilayered employment relationship (either the agency or the CCAC) to improve compensation. Steward Joanne suggested cutting the agency “middle man” to save money and ensure client concerns go directly to the CCAC. Leah felt a more direct employment model would allow both clients and workers to benefit “because the money that the agencies are collecting will be just divided between us and the clients.” These views reflect a basis of solidarity between workers and clients, and conflictual relations with the state and agencies over compensation. They suggest the union should forge worker-client alliances to bring value to this work, as emphasized in care organizing studies. The relation between workers and clients is more complicated, however, with respect to employment security.

Employment Security

Members identified both the state’s competitive contract agency model and the agencies’ hiring of them as casual workers as the sources of their employment insecurity. They criticized the agencies for providing unstable hours. Some felt agencies manipulated schedules to lower labor costs. Maribel described how, rather than fill senior workers’ hours to provide full-time employment, her agency gave client hours to new homecare workers who received a lower hourly rate. Limited employment security led to a high stress working environment, as Steward Vera described: “Today it’s eight hours. Tomorrow it might be four only. And if you have dependents or some other obligation, it’s very stressful, you live in fear.” Steward Danielle linked insecurity to the contract agency model. She described how employers who are underbid by other companies lose contracts, putting homecare workers out of work and losing their hard-earned seniority, pension, and benefits. Danielle emphasized how the competitive contract model, coupled with the fact that for-profits are less likely to be unionized, would impact both compensation and security. Indeed, when her old agency lost its contract, she had to work for a new agency that provided fewer hours and less travel time. The difficulty of organizing under the contract model shaped workers’ view of union strength. Liling said the union was limited in what they could do because it was the agency that assigned hours: “If [they do] not give [it] to you, [there is] no use.” These critiques suggest the union’s focus on reforming the model did not involve workers sufficiently.

Some members felt the state supported client flexibility over employment security through the contract model. Both Leah (not active in the union) and Steward Joanne felt the CCAC acted more on client preferences, which is problematic when clients want a new homecare worker because the worker then loses that client—and corresponding pay for work hours—even if they did nothing objectively wrong. Joanne argued homecare workers and the agency were too intimidated to raise issues about problematic clients to the CCAC. “[The agency] would go to CCAC and complain, and it could go as far as, ‘Okay, well if you don’t want to benefit the client you are going to lose the client.’” Steward Danielle said the CCAC asked agencies to switch homecare workers for a client, resulting in lost paid hours. Workers were not necessarily fired, but their hours were cut, contributing to insecurity.

Some members were critical of what they perceived as the union’s acceptance of the state’s emphasis on client flexibility over workers’ employment security. Maribel said this:

I think we don’t have a union . . . Last year I had a complaint about something [that] happened with a client, the cancellation of the client. And my supervisor told me to be with the union and . . . they [the union] DIDN’T SHOW UP! Because they said there was nothing wrong. I called the union steward . . . They said that the client has the right to cancel the service. I KNOW they have the right to cancel the service, but this is not right.

The steward’s response was consistent with SEIU’s acceptance of client’s rights to influence who helps them, which is also the case in U.S. jurisdictions (Delp and Quan 2002). In Ontario under the agency model, the union’s acceptance of client flexibility was not as explicit, yet union officials pointed to the difficulty of ensuring employment security given the contract model, as discussed above. Efforts to negotiate flexibility for clients with employment security could be part of a strategy that goes beyond the particular concerns of its members to also improve services. However, the quote from Maribel, and others, suggests the union needs to do more internal organizing if it is to pursue this strategy. This negative experience influenced Maribel’s decision to stop attending union meetings. Insufficient internal organizing hindered members’ ability to see how the union might address the effects of employment security vis-a-vis the state, while still supporting client autonomy. Leah suggested such an alliance could encourage clients to give positive evaluations of workers to the agency, thus supporting employment security. But during the time of the interviews, and continuing today, the union focused on influencing public policy on the contract model, rather than political education with the membership. Thus, regardless of the union’s success in winning employment security for full-time workers, and their efforts to challenge employment insecurity through policy reform, a lack of involvement of workers in these endeavors, and subsequent lack of support by the workers, can limit union power. This dynamic is even more evident when we consider the labor process.

The Labor Process

A basis of solidarity between homecare workers and clients against the state and employers was evident in members’ identification of how inadequate funding and the contract model negatively affect both workers and clients in the labor process. Some described how the CCAC was unrealistic in their expectations of how much work could be accomplished in the allotted time. Liling said the CCAC “pushes you to do [work] too fast.” May said,

I know some of them [the clients], they complain, “Oh I need more time, I need more hours, I need more baths.” I said, but we do everything that the government gives us, you know? Not only depends on us. If I can do more to help you, I’ll be able to, but I have other people waiting for me. I can’t spend more time here.

In general, members described how inadequate funding and the employment insecurity inherent in the contract model trickles down to the workplace to generate tensions with clients.

Workers also experienced tensions with clients that did not so clearly emanate from inadequate funding or the contract model. This included sexual harassment, clients who smoked or abused alcohol, verbal abuse, and overt or covert racism. Workers recounted clients rejecting their services because of their race or ethnicity or subjecting them to explicit abuse. African-born May said, “Yeah, she calls me the bad names . . . ‘This is my house, this is my house. How come a Black person come to give work in my house?” Aaliyah, who was born in Trinidad and of Arabic descent “got yelled at for no reason.” The agencies did not tolerate explicit racial preferences, yet clients who recast preferences as performance issues were generally assigned another worker. Some workers described more subtle cues that suggested the client’s deep discomfort when in an intimate setting with workers of color. Caribbean-born Tanice said, “They might flinch when I go to touch them, they might pull away.” Others describe being treated like a maid. This was in part related to cuts to state funding of housekeeping, and clients’ real need for it. However, members also discussed disrespect in terms of how they were treated by clients or their families. Parvati, who was born in Trinidad of South Asian descent, was told to clean the fridge and countertop “so you could see your face in it.” Interpreting this request as degrading, she said, “You have to treat that person who is going there with RESPECT . . . We should not be treated as a maid going into a client’s house.” Polish-born Aneta said,

I have one client and they send me [there] only twice . . . She was living alone, and she was very rude. She even said “I have money. I can FIRE you.” And you know, I was like, “no you can’t fire me . . .” I was upset with her.

Eastern European, Asian, Latin American, African, and Caribbean workers said some clients commented on their accents and immigrant status.

Addressing these tensions with clients in the daily labor process is necessary if the union hopes to build and sustain a coalition of workers and clients to win better compensation and employment security from the state. Aneta evaluated the union positively for its effort to gain better compensation. However, she also felt the union was weak and expressed the desire for a group separate from the union with whom workers could discuss workplace issues:

We are working, and we never discuss any of our problems because we don’t have too many meetings. And we don’t know each other. It would be better, I think, when we tell the problem in the meeting . . . what problem we have about clients.

Aneta emphasized how tensions with clients could be tackled through collective channels such as union meetings, if not through the legalistic grievance procedure within the collective agreement. Similarly, May feels the union improved compensation but did not help workers address issues with clients. She envisioned an alternative organization that could handle worker-client issues: “One group to defend us, that we can bring our issues, you know, our concerns about the job, what we will face every day. You know, dealing with the clients. Yeah, someone that sees us.” Like Aneta and May, Tanice supported the idea of an organization that defended workers, listened to their issues with clients, and helped resolve those issues, because the union was not filling this need. Tanice’s view was informed by her interaction with the representative:

She don’t want to actually deal with the grievance and deal with the paperwork and do the arbitration and the mediation, you know, and that’s why I think the staff are losing their jobs. We have a union, but they don’t fight for us on all the issues.

Although this critique was directed at the union representative, our evidence suggests this problem was present elsewhere.

Even some stewards were critical of the union’s approach to daily workplace issues. Claire linked being treated like a maid to the devaluation of caregiving work more broadly:

They [family members] refer to me as the cleaning lady . . . A lot of workers really feel that’s why the way we are looked upon in society or in the health care organization is that YOU are really just at the bottom of the list . . . And when you really think about it? Yeah, we are. We are. Because we don’t truly have the support we should have . . . We don’t have the recognition that we should have.

Claire’s emphasis on the need to value homecare work fit with union strategy to target the state. Yet she also linked this public struggle to micro-level indignities often hidden in the home-workplaces, and the union’s lack of involvement in the latter shaped her evaluation of the union. Despite her position as a union steward, she did not think the union helped workers with their daily concerns. “I believe I can stand up for some that are afraid to or doesn’t know how to. Because of SEIU [do] I do that? Absolutely not.” Claire argued workers are only assisted when individual union representatives like her, who genuinely care for coworkers’ well-being, made the effort to help them resolve workplace issues. On the one hand Claire has “become the union,” a key goal of internal organizing. Yet drawing on her own experience with a social unionism that focuses on the political realm, she critiques the union’s capacity for improving the conditions of homecare workers. “I really thought the union would be . . . an entity that looks after workers, so workers have a true sounding board.” Claire’s views reflected Aneta, May, and Tanice’s: the union did not sufficiently support workers to address tensions with clients in the labor process.

Only one member felt an alliance between workers and clients could address workplace tensions. Some felt clients could not help workers at this level because they viewed them as dependents with their own problems to focus on. Others more strongly stated workers and clients had different interests. Tanice said, “I think we should separate them because we have different issues and different needs and different wants.” Natalia linked this general idea of different interests to tensions in the labor process:

No, because clients are one side; we are on the other side . . . We work for them, but it doesn’t mean we work WITH them because most of the time they look at us as like we are their maid. Very little number of people look at us as their equal.

In short, relations akin to domestic service shape these workers’ views of optimal union strategy, and these views provide insight into the difficulties of practicing social unionism in this context.

Discussion and Conclusion

Our analysis of workers’ lived experiences of their homecare union shows both the potential and difficulty of practicing social unionism in the public sector. Workers praised their union for connecting funding levels to fair compensation, linking a reformed service delivery model to employment security, and strategically targeting both direct employers and the state. Their positive evaluation of this framing and repertoire reflects Ross’s (2013) claim that the main basis of public sector workers’ power is not economic but political. Yet Toronto homecare workers critiqued their union for not addressing tensions with clients in the labor process. This finding contrasts with studies of public sector social unionism that emphasize solidarity between workers and clients emanating from workers’ direct provision of social services to citizens in need (Baines 2013; Hemmings 2011; Johnston 1994). Prior analyses of social unionism are useful starting points for analyzing homecare worker organizing, yet the distinctive service delivery model and labor process in homecare shapes how unions engage in social unionism.

Homecare workers’ views of their union reveal the complexity of practicing social unionism in this sector. Studies of care workers emphasize how positive relationships with clients inform issues important to care workers and are used by unions to organize and represent them. Framing thus focuses on linking quality care with quality work, and key strategies include alliances between unions and organizations of service clients to target the state and mobilize public opinion in support of funding and compensation (Baines 2013; Brown 2009; Mareschal 2006). A desire to engage in alliances and link fair compensation to better funding was evident among the workers we interviewed. Yet they also spoke of tensions with some clients over issues of employment security and in the labor process. While some tensions were related to insufficient funding levels, and thus best addressed by targeting the state, others stemmed more from racialized and gendered inequalities. A few studies recognize tensions in terms of clients’ hesitancy in allying with unions whose commitment to quality care these groups may question (Delp and Quan 2002; Mareschal 2006). But a commitment to alliances with clients on workers’ part is generally taken for granted in the literature. In contrast, homecare workers’ experiences suggest strategy centered on a public fight against the state and employers in alliance with clients is necessary but not sufficient. Addressing labor process issues is complicated by dispersed workplaces and gendered ideologies that limit regulation and make enforcement in private homes challenging. But union strategy also matters (Boris and Klein 2015).

Our analysis suggests the difficulty of addressing tensions in the labor process is as much about the enduring effects of a business unionist practice based on hierarchical and bureaucratic modes of representation, as it is about the structural barriers of the contract agency model and insufficient funding. This reflects Lopez’s (2004) argument based on his study of nursing home workers and SEIU members in Pennsylvania. Toronto homecare workers, ranging from those who are not active to those who are chief union stewards, felt it was problematic that the union was not present or sufficiently supportive in the labor process, even while these workers supported political work connecting the state and employer. Workers had mixed reactions to our questions about alternative organizational forms; however, whether they supported them or not, their reflections pointed to the lack of union engagement with members on daily labor process issues in the home-workplaces. If we assume union platforms that do not fit with members’ labor process experiences both reflect and reinforce their lack of participation in unions (Camfield 2013), then this finding has implications for internal organizational dynamics within social unions focused on political organizing. Moreover, our findings support Camfield’s (2013) argument that an active membership strengthens the union, while union power encourages members to get involved, extending leadership experience to more people. The importance—and difficulty—of engaging in both top-down and bottom-up organizing has been shown in the literature, yet this tension is even greater in homecare given the multilevel employment relations, their gendering, and racialization.

Our findings of tensions with clients in the labor process, and the subsequent critique of the union for not addressing them, suggest the importance of developing a social unionist practice at the labor process level. A social unionist approach to the homecare labor process would include political education and leadership development with both workers and clients. Critical education would aim toward building leadership among workers and clients to address how insufficient state funding and outsourced service delivery pits them against one another. It would also seek to build a deep understanding about how gendered, racialized, and other tensions can emerge in the labor process to undermine worker and client solidarity, and develop leadership to challenge systemic, social inequalities. Political education and leadership development of workers is of limited focus in the union organizing literature (but see Birdsell Bauer and Cranford 2017; Brown 2009), although it has long been at the center of domestic worker strategies to challenge racism and sexism inside and outside workplaces (Boris and Nadasen 2008; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001). A concrete goal could be political education around the historical and continuing connection between racialization and domestic servitude. A version of the domestic worker organizing repertoire that includes clients is being experimented with in home-based elder care in the United States and globally (Poo 2011). Workers and clients need support to develop leadership that addresses the complex tensions in the labor process.

These findings also have implications for other cases of homecare worker organizing. The California IP model is a widely lauded example of an innovative social unionism that unites unions and disability and senior groups to push for quality services and quality work at the state level (Delp and Quan 2002; Mareschal 2006). SEIU’s move to a state-level union structure in California and elsewhere brings more power in negotiating a single contract with the state, yet if it is not supplemented with local member engagement, it might be difficult to sustain. Boris and Klein (2015) refer to the broader problem of a top-down unionism based on deals with politicians, without developing workers’ power at the grassroots, as the “Achilles’ heel” of public sector, political unionism, and suggest looking to recent domestic worker organizing as an alternative model. Our analysis of how the homecare labor process shapes members’ views of their union suggests that a social unionism based primarily on alliances with other social movements to target the state and the broader public insufficiently addresses inequalities in this sector. Engagement with members on how to address labor process tensions in the home-workplaces could generate the deeper alliances identified by some scholars as necessary to build power and challenge inequality (Cockfield et al. 2009; Tattersall 2009). The internal structure of the union is an important topic for future research. The Ontario province-wide “local” continues to represent workers in homecare, long-term residential care, and hospitals, but in other places, top-down decisions on the scope of the local has squashed rank and file leadership (Boris and Klein 2015). These organizational questions are important also because they can reflect and reinforce tensions across racial lines (Chun 2016; Ness 1999). Comparative studies that include workers’ views of union strategies are needed to better understand the challenges and opportunities of practicing social unionism in this sector.

Our analysis, based on interviews with workers and union officials from one union in the late 2000s, holds lessons for today and suggest directions for future research. Since our interviews, SEIU has made some strategic gains in the areas of compensation and employment security. The union has organized approximately six hundred additional homecare workers since these interviews; they have helped achieve broader reforms making it easier for workers in fragmented employment relations to organize. At the time of research, the competitive bidding system of homecare delivery had just been put on hold, but the workers’ lived experience of their union was still defined significantly by it. Reflecting ongoing political influence of this union, at the time of writing, the Ontario government had just announced a new government agency that will deliver homecare in spring of 2018 directly to clients in need of high volume care in three regions, with the goal of full provincial roll-out by March 2021 (Crawley 2017). Due to both political pressure and an Ontario-wide two-week strike in 2013 of 4,500 homecare PSWs working for Red Cross, the provincial government budgeted a raise of the homecare minimum wage by $4.00/hr to $16.50, taking effect in 2017.² Since our interviews, the union helped start the Ontario Caregivers Association, where they work with service providers, some client organizations (like MS Society), and families to advocate for improved access to support unpaid caregivers. Our analysis in this article suggests that these strategies and their success thus far will augment workers’ support for their union, bringing an additional source of power.

More broadly, since this research was conducted, the union has worked with the state to develop a worker registry.³ When coupled with new models of unionization, registries have enhanced workers’ labor market security, while preserving recipients’ ability to hire and fire (Delp and Quan 2002). They are, thus, one way to address a key tension in the broader home-based care sector between flexibility for service users and security for workers, a challenge that is most evident within the independent living movement of disabled people (Boris and Klein 2015). Yet in Ontario, like elsewhere, a framing of alliance based on quality “care” will not resonate with much of the disability community for whom “care” denotes paternalism and expert knowledge over their bodies (Kelly 2016). Furthermore, the problem with this way of addressing security is that labor process tensions between workers and clients are displaced to the labor market, through firing and quitting, rather than negotiated between workers, recipients, employers, unions, and governments. This might be suitable for conflicts linked to insufficient funding but less so for conflicts linked to racism and sexism. While there have been new successes in the union’s political organizing, a deeper connecting of the union with workers on labor process issues is still limited. The union implemented a new leadership development program in 2017, which could begin to shift the negative lived experiences of a social unionism primarily focused on the political realm. Follow-up interviews with a larger sample of members, after this initiative has been in place for a time, would further augment our understanding of how workers’ lived experience of their union relates to unions’ strategic success and power. Comparative analysis of other unions would shed light on how distinct or similar are SEIU strategies. The key conceptual insight of this article gleaned from workers’ lived experiences of their union—that unions need to support workers to negotiate both positive and negative experiences with clients in the labor process while also pushing for better compensation and employment security in the political realm—remains strategically and conceptually relevant. We hope this analysis will prompt more research on the unique repertories necessary for unions to augment workers’ power and challenge inequalities in different sectors.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the workers and union staff we interviewed for their valuable insights and time. Funding for the collection of these data are from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) project “Negotiating Quality Care and Quality Work: Personal Care Providers and People with Physical Disabilities” (File No: 410-06-1424). We would like to recognize the students and faculty in the 2013-2014 Research Practicum in the Sociology Department at University of Toronto for their comments on early drafts that informed this article. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their keen insights that helped us to hone these ideas.

Authors’ Note

A previous draft of this article was presented at the Canadian Sociological Association Annual Meetings, May 2014 at Brock University, and we thank the audience for their helpful comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for the collection of these data are from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) project “Negotiating Quality Care and Quality Work: Personal Care Providers and People with Physical Disabilities” (File 410-06-1424). Funding for the analysis and writing of this article are from the SSHRC project “Gender, Migration and the Work of Care” (File 895-2012-1021).

Notes

Author Biographies

Cynthia Cranford is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. She is the coauthor of Self-employed Workers Organize (2005 McGill-Queen’s University Press), and of articles on economic restructuring, immigration, and union organizing published in Gender & Society, Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, Social Problems, Work, Employment and Society, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a book comparing the social organization of homecare in Ontario and California from the perspectives of workers, service recipients or consumers, activists, state officials, and employers.

Angela Hick is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto. She is the coauthor of “The Filipina Connection: the Face of Exploitation in Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program” in the Asian Journal of Canadian Studies. Her dissertation research focuses on pathways into precarious work, more specifically, how the mark of a nonconviction record shapes employment outcomes of Canadian citizens.

Louise Birdsell Bauer is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto. In addition to studying care work and unions, she researches academic restructuring in universities and precarious academic work. Her work has been published in the Canadian Review of Sociology and Work, Employment & Society. The common thread in her current research is the differential impact of institutional arrangements on workers’ experiences, attitudes, and lives.

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