Could Canada’s largest union tackle the non-profit wage gap? One Calgary counsellor believes it can

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Garry Lehmann has seen a lot in his 30-year career in frontline mental health services. Between stints at group homes, working with high-risk youth in schools and “hardcore” treatment programs, he’s seen just how grim the conditions for frontline workers can be.

Now a counselor at a Wood’s Homes facility, a children’s mental health centre headquartered in Calgary, and the president of CUPE Local 4731 – which represents six frontline non-profits across Alberta and the Northwest Territories – he’s trying to shine a spotlight on one of the biggest problems facing frontline non-profits today: poor pay.

“The sector demands extremely qualified, experienced people with education and degrees to work in the field – to start at $21 an hour,” Lehmann says. “We’re taking care of some of the most high-risk, vulnerable populations that there are.” Unfortunately, Lehmann says, staff are confronted every day with occupational health and safety concerns, and even violence from clients.

So Lehmann is trying to convince his fellow organizers at the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) – the largest union in the country – to start lobbying the Alberta and Canadian governments for better government funding to the non-profit sector. Lehmann believes this wouldn’t just address pay issues within the sector, or constant turnover. It could also improve workplace safety, relationships with management and even client satisfaction, at a time when the need for frontline non-profit services in Canada is at an all-time high.

 “It’s not just a job”

The six non-profits Lehmann’s union local represents provide a wide range of frontline mental health, shelter, and support services. Wood’s Homes serves children up to the age of 18, and their families. Alpha House, a Calgary shelter, deals with adult clients, many of whom have alcohol or drug dependency issues, Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter serves women, and the Trinity Foundation Society of Alberta provides subsidized housing for seniors, many of whom have mental health or addictions issues.

“We’re covering that entire gamut of high-risk, high needs individuals,” Lehmann says.

Working with these clients is rewarding, but it isn’t easy. Many are traumatized or have complex mental health and addictions challenges. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, individuals with mental health issues are no more violent than the general population. Only about three per cent of violent crime in Canada can be attributed to mental health issues.

However, individuals in mental distress can lash out and its frontline service workers who respond. Lehmann explains people as operating within a behavioural baseline, where they are calm, and an escalated state. The latter can come after a person is distressed by a trigger of some kind.

“Most of our clients don’t live on baseline,” he says. “They live somewhere between trigger and escalation constantly because of the trauma that’s happened.”

Sometimes, the worst can happen. In October 2019, an 18-year-old client stabbed Deborah Onwu, a 47-year-old youth counselor, to death at a Wood’s Homes suite in Calgary. (The client later pleaded guilty to the killing). After that incident, Lehmann says, Wood’s Homes created a workplace violence prevention committee – which included him, as union president – and overhauled the centre’s workplace violence policy.

But the impact of working with clients in this state, even in a workplace with no fatalities, can wear workers down and open them up to psychological injuries. Jeannette Waegemakers Schiff, a professor at the University of Calgary’s faculty of social work, conducted a 2015 mental health study on frontline outreach and support program workers in Calgary, including domestic violence shelters. Of all the frontline workers she surveyed, 33 per cent reported traumatic stress at a rate that would qualify for a PTSD diagnosis.

Many of these cases, Waegemakers Schiff says, aren’t the result of a single traumatic event. As Nick Kerman, a project scientist at CAMH, notes, repeated exposure to physical assaults, overdose, violent or accident death, or suicides over the course of a career in frontline service add up. “They’re very common events that workers are exposed to,” he says.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic began. 

As clients dealt with an incredibly contagious virus that spread easily in the congregate settings of service providers, the stress on frontline workers went even higher. Waegemakers Schiff did a second analysis that found traumatic stress rates at the level of a PTSD diagnosis rose to 47 per cent during COVID, nearly half of all workers surveyed. 

Not all of this increase can be blamed on COVID. The ongoing opioid crisis killed roughly 23,000 people between January 2016 and March 2021, according to a 2022 federal government report. Housing unaffordability is reaching new heights across Canada. The results are clients who have more adverse stressors in their lives – and the frontline workers who care for them are increasingly unable to afford to do the work, let alone take time off to recover.

Stress on the frontlines

Frontline workers have always dealt with low paycheques. According to Karen Ball, executive director of the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations, the average wage of ‘community non-profits’ in Alberta (organizations that aren’t municipalities, universities, schools, or hospitals)is just $40,489 a year. By comparison, the average annual wage for all workers in Alberta, regardless of sector, is $61,045.

Much of the funding used by Alberta frontline service organizations to pay their workers comes from the provincial government in the form of contract funding. Unfortunately, the last two years of inflation combined with population growth means more money is needed every year to provide the same level of pay to workers and service to clients – and it hasn’t kept pace. “The funding has slowly been slipping backwards over seven or eight years,” Ball says.

That means that when Lehmann and his fellow union leaders sit down with non-profit managers during contract negotiations, getting a raise to match cost-of-living increases is tricky. There simply isn’t more money for these frontline service providers to give, even if they are completely on the union’s side. “We’re continuing to get zero per cent wage increases because there’s not enough money,” Lehmann says. “Because the employers are being tapped out.”

Many frontline non-profit workers who start in poorly paid, tumultuous environments soon quit. Some go into better-paid government positions doing similar work. Others leave the sector altogether. “In my 30 years, I’ve worked with some damn good people,” Lehmann says. “And I’ve seen a lot of really good people go.” High turnover isn’t unheard of in frontline positions, but it appears to be getting worse.

According to an Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters from February 2023, turnover rates have hit 45 per cent, “an unprecedented turnover rate in the Alberta domestic violence sector.” (Average turnover nationwide is around 27 per cent.) The Council points to a lack of funding increases for staff wages in Alberta since the 2014-2015 fiscal year, with a similar dearth in improvements for operational costs since the 2015-2016 fiscal year.

To make matters worse, a third of domestic violence shelter staff told the Council they work an additional job to supplement their income, and nearly all – 94 per cent – workers thinking about leaving their jobs say insufficient pay is their chief concern. On the management side of the equation, nearly nine in 10 shelters say stagnant wages harm their ability to recruit staff.

But improving government funding, to Lehmann, is about more than wages. It also affects occupational health and safety at frontline non-profits. Lower government contracts means less money to spend on safety protocols. It also means less staffing overall which, when a client is in crisis, can be very dangerous for responding workers. Onwu was one of just two workers on-shift at the Wood’s House unit when she was killed in 2019.

“They were in two individual units, with a cinderblock wall,” Lehmann says of Onwu and her co-worker. “So it’s very difficult to get support. But I’m not blaming employers. Employers are doing the best they can with the meager funds that they’re provided with.”

It would be easy for Lehmann to simply lash out at management, but that’s not how he rolls. “My modus operandi is not to take the gloves off and get in the boxing ring,” Lehmann says. “My modus operandi is to forge working relationships that foster the betterment of everyone.”

 

 The funding gap

At regular gatherings, CUPE members debate proposals for their union to advance specific causes or organize campaigns. Just before last Christmas, Lehmann crafted his resolution to lobby the provincial government to increase funding for the not-for-profit sector. He even asked management at his workplace to help draft it.

Lehmann’s argument was straightforward: the government relies on not-for-profits to care for vulnerable people, and needs highly educated, skilled, and qualified staff to do so. “When I brought it to the floor in March,” Lehmann says – referring to the latest CUPE Alberta gathering – “it was voted, in favour, unanimously.”

In the meantime, some organizations are investing as much as possible into not only paying their staff, but improving safety. The Calgary Drop-In Centre, one of the largest homeless shelters in North America, didn’t see a funding increase between 2008 and the current fiscal year, but used its revenue to improve its workplace as much as possible.

Sandra Clarkson, the DI’s executive director, says her organization currently pays all staff on-site a minimum of $22.40 an hour, and increased its psychological support benefits from $500 per year, per employee, to $2,000 annually – and for employee family members, too. The DI added paid sick days, paid wellness days, and launched a mental health strategy. It also made a point of not sugar-coating the challenges of working in a frontline service provider.

“In our job postings, instead of saying, ‘You may be required to intervene in a drug poisoning’, we say, ‘You will be required,’” Clarkson says. “There are just some realities of the environment that people need to have their eyes wide open to determine if this is the right place for them.”

The DI did receive additional funding this fiscal year to accommodate pay increases for frontline staff, but it also has a fundraising team. Last year, Clarkson says, the DI raised just under $4 million. To put that into perspective, its funding from Alberta’s Ministry of Seniors, Community and Social Services was about $14 million. Clarkson says those funds don’t cover the entire cost of running the DI, but it has other revenue streams – and has been very successful at pulling together more money.

However, even the DI says it’s having to fundraise to cover the higher cost of utilities, food, and maintenance supplies – line items that have remained static since 2018. Clarkson says it’s fundraising to cover some of those costs, and looking for more government support “to help them see the critical importance of funding programs and services, such as emergency homeless shelters, appropriately, so that we can provide services at the level that is required, and that people deserve.”

 Turning up the heat

Every two years, CUPE holds a convention with delegates from across the country, who bring forward resolutions to a national stage for discussion, and ultimately, action. Lehmann’s motion is one of them. He’ll fly to Quebec City in October for the national convention. What happens next is up to union membership.

Unsurprisingly, non-profit advocates like the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations and Imagine Canada largely agree on the need for more government funding for wages. During the recent Alberta provincial election, CCVO set out a series of platform recommendations for all parties to consider, including better support for the sector. Ball says she has seen “some movement” from both the NDP and the United Conservative Party that suggests they understand the sector’s labour market issues.

For his part, Lehmann would love to see staff pay go up by five per cent because of improved government funding. He’d like to see non-profit staff receive the benefits and safe workplaces they deserve. And, ultimately, Lehmann wants workers to feel they can grow their careers in a sector – and society – that so desperately needs them.

Sitting in his car after a long day at work, Lehmann points out that frontline social work isn’t just a job. “It’s a very specialized type of field that requires very skilled individuals,” he says. “Well, if you want very skilled individuals, they need to be compensated accordingly.”