Risk payment plan has value, but worthy workers will be left out

Opinion

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This article was published 01/06/2020 (1571 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has often been said that no good deed goes unpunished. That has never been more true than it is with the provincial government’s attempts to reward essential workers.

On Tuesday, Premier Brian Pallister outlined the first details of the Manitoba Risk Recognition Program, a $120-million federal-provincial fund to acknowledge those who continued working through the pandemic in essential jobs. Ottawa offered $3 billion and asked the provinces to kick in an additional $1 billion. In exchange for cost-sharing, the provinces get to set the terms on eligiblility.

Although he was not definitive on Tuesday, Pallister said that somewhere around 100,000 Manitoba low-income workers could receive payments of roughly $1,000 each. But those are just estimates.

In fact, the only thing certain right now about the Manitoba Risk Recognition Program is that — through no particular fault of either the federal or provincial government — there will be as many people unhappy about the outcome as pleased.

Eligibility in Manitoba is limited to people who made no more than $6,500 over a 10-week period (about $15 per hour) between March 20 and May 29. You are not eligible if you have received the federal CERB benefit.

The list of eligible occupations captures hundreds of job descriptions across the public and private sector. But given the restrictions the premier has put in place, the actual number of eligible receipients will undoubtedly be much smaller. That is already provoking some groups of workers who are not going to be eligible.

The Manitoba Nurses Union noted that with the program’s income thresholds, all registered nurses, registered practical nurses, nurse practitioners and most of the licensed practical nurses will be excluded. That is particularly galling given that the MNU has been dealt an imposed wage freeze for the last three years.

The nurses are not wrong to expect some financial reward for their hard work. And it’s not clear whether they have been excluded from this program because — for the last four years — the MNU has been among the foremost critics of the Pallister government. Either way, Pallister has become a little less popular with a constituency that was already pretty soured on his performance to begin with.

And therein lies the danger in a program like this. In trying to determine eligibility for the program, the Pallister government has entered the gerbil-wheel of public policy, where decision makers go round and round without ever reaching a clear sense of the fairest solution.

On the one hand, nurses and other frontline essential workers — police, firefighters and paramedics — did assume most of the risk in this pandemic. And while a certain amount of risk is a normal part of their work, the pandemic represents a whole new level of threat.

On the other hand, given their income levels, police, nurses and firefighter/paramedics need the top-up a lot less than lower-income workers. And despite not working on the literal front line of the pandemic, these new-age “essential workers” still faced a measure of risk that has never been inherent in their job descriptions.

Pallister said a committee of unions and business lobby groups that advised him on the risk recognition fund looked to programs in other provinces for inspiration. What they will have found is that none of the other provinces who have moved forward with their own wage top-up programs have devised a perfect solution.

Prince Edward Island learned very quickly that its original parameters were too restrictive and was forced to update its criteria to ensure that more people could qualify.

British Columbia focused its program on 250,000 workers in the health-care, social services and corrections sectors regardless of income level.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick limited the individual payments to about $500 but used a very broad list of eligible jobs including people who work in child care, home care and personal care homes, community residences, homeless shelters and food banks.

The only clear conclusion from looking at all these different approaches is that there are far more people who deserve a financial reward than there are financial resources.

To ensure the greatest degree of fairness, one can only hope Pallister is willing to revisit eligibility criteria in the event that uptake is lower than expected. He has not done that with other economic support programs that have paid out only a fraction of the total amount budgeted. Although he is committed to spending the entire $120 million, he would not say if he would expand the eligibility criteria or merely change the amount paid out to each worker.

Underlying the debate over the risk recognition program is the fact that some of Canada’s lowest-income workers became some of the most important workers in the early days of the pandemic. And although a little bit of money now would be appreciated, it’s not really what these people need.

Minimum wage in this country is woefully inadequate and too many employers rely on business models predicated on paying the lowest possible wage. Despite acknowledging the problem, governments have yet to find the right levers — improvements to the minimum wage or some form of guaranteed income program — that will reward working people with a living income.

There is a long list of needs facing political leaders right now and limited resources to meet them. We can only hope that they remember just how important grocery store clerks and janitors were during the pandemic, and do something meaningful and permanent to lift them out of poverty.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca