Disabled residents of Winnipeg facility living with day-to-day uncertainty as strike continues

Some residents at a Winnipeg non-profit health care facility for people with physical disabilities say they're facing uncertainty in their day-to-day lives as a strike has left them without the help of the people who usually care for them.

About 160 workers with Ten Ten Sinclair Housing — which provides care to 100 residents in seven facilities across the city — went on strike at midnight Wednesday after bargaining for a new collective agreement failed.

Lorna Ross, who has lived in Ten Ten Sinclair's Fokus II apartment block on Kennedy Street for three years, says she missed work on Wednesday due to the strike.

"I understand that people can fight for what they want for wages, but at the same time, there should have been a better plan in place," Ross told CBC News Thursday.

While she and some other residents are now getting the care they need, Ross says she's hoping her life gets back to normal quickly.

"Now we're living day-to-day," she said.

"What are we going to do for the weekend? Who knows when we're going to get up? Who knows where we're going to eat?"

The striking workers are mostly health-care aides represented by the Manitoba branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which says the strike is the largest in the province's health-care system in more than a decade.

"The update from today's strike line is [that] these workers want to get back to work," Gina McKay, CUPE Manitoba's president, told CBC News on Thursday.

"They care about the residents and they've been [working for] eight years on low wages."

Wage increases for Ten Ten Sinclair's staff have been less than two per cent since 2016, according to CUPE.

Ten Ten Sinclair executive director Debbie Van Ettinger previously told CBC News that wages for the non-profit's health-care aides are determined by the funding the facility receives from the provincial government and the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

A spokesperson for the health authority told CBC News Thursday its priority is to ensure the residents of Ten Ten Sinclair and its associated sites are getting the care they need.

The WRHA activated an "incident command structure" — which is used to organize emergency response efforts — in partnership with the non-profit Thursday morning, according to the spokesperson.

There are also agency staff helping to fill schedules and shifts for health-care aides and nurses at Ten Ten Sinclair and its associated sites, as well as training WRHA staff to "meet some of the unique needs" at the facilities, the spokesperson said.

'Incredibly sad': resident

Nolan Smith, a quadriplegic who lives at the Fokus I apartment block on Assiniboine Avenue, says he's been in the hands of new people — agency health-care workers brought in to fill the gap — since the strike began.

He feels lucky to have had minimal interruptions in his care, since he needs help being turned over while he's in bed, as well as assistance getting out of bed, going to the bathroom and taking a bath.

He's heard from other residents who received no care at all on Wednesday, and whose friends and family had to rally around them to provide it.

"It's incredibly sad that it needed to happen for people to get the care that they needed," he said.

The situation comes as a shock and has left him mentally exhausted, said Smith.

"I have to laugh," he said. "If I'm not laughing, I'm angry — or I would be crying."