Some healthcare workers on Vancouver Island who have been waiting months for their pandemic pay received good news Friday.
A memo from their employer Compass says they’ll get paid their top-up this week.
However, Diana Fagan, a housekeeper at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital, says she’ll believe it when she sees it.
“It would be really nice and we’re hopeful but as far as things have been going we’ll see.”
Fagan was featured by CHEK News in December as being one of 300 housekeepers working at NRGH and Victoria General Hospital, who still hadn’t received her temporary pandemic pay — a lump-sum payment from the provincial government of about $4 per hour for a 16-week period from March 15 to July 4 of last year.
Days after the story aired, health minister Adrian Dix, apologized after it was revealed that more than 80,000 healthcare workers province-wide still hadn’t received pandemic pay.
Fast-forward one month, and Fagan and other housekeepers on Vancouver Island are still waiting for their money.
“There’s a whole bunch of places that have been contracted out that haven’t been paid yet so we’re here for everyone so that everyone gets it. We should’ve all got it from the get-go,” said Fagan.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see everybody walking around trying to do their job but they’re ‘Where’s our money? Where’s our money?,'” said Ellen Vannatter.
RELATED: Housekeepers at Vancouver Island hospitals still waiting long-promised pandemic pay
RELATED: More hospital workers across Vancouver Island say they haven’t received pandemic pay
The Hospital Employees’ Union says fewer than half of the more than 1,200 workers their union represents on Vancouver Island will get paid this week.
“There are some compass workers who work in extended care facilities in the Victoria area who will not be paid on Tuesday and that’s because compass says they haven’t got the money yet from government to pay them,” said Mike Old, the Union’s Business Manager.
Housekeepers at hospitals in Comox, Campbell River, and some in Victoria are still waiting, too.
“Over the longterm, the real solution here is to bring all of these workers back under the control of our public health authorities. This is a commitment that the NDP made during the last election,” said Old.
The union has been pushing the government for a timeline for implementation.
In a statement to CHEK News, the provincial government blamed “administrative complexities that come with distributing a new program to hundreds of thousands of people working for hundreds of different employers” for the delays.
The government says the remaining claims will be processed by month’s end.
RELATED: B.C. government says essential workers are receiving long-awaited pandemic pay
Kendall Hanson
