TORONTO -- Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a temporary "pandemic payment" for front-line workers risking their lives amid the COVID-19 pandemic. These workers would receive an additional $4 an hour for the next sixteen weeks, as well as a possible $250 lump-sum a month if they worked 100 hours or more.

Here are the employees who are eligible for this wage increase:

Health care and long-term care:

Eligible workplaces include acute hospitals, long-term care homes (private, municipal and not-for-profit), licensed retirement homes, and home and community care.

Eligible workers include:

  • Personal support workers
  • Registered nurses
  • Registered practical nurses
  • Nurse practitioners
  • Attendant care workers
  • Auxiliary staff, including:
  • Porters, cook, custodian, housekeeping, laundry facilities and other key workers.
  • Developmental services workers
  • Mental health and addictions workers

Social services:

Eligible workplaces include homes supporting people with developmental disabilities, intervenor residential sites, Indigenous healing and wellness facilities or shelters, shelters for survivors of gender-based violence and human trafficking,yYouth justice residential facilities, licensed children's residential sites, directly operated residential facility, emergency shelters, supportive housing facilities, respite/drop-in centres, temporary shelter facilities,and hotels and motels used for self-isolation and/or shelter overflow.

Eligible workers include:

  • Direct support workers (e.g. developmental service workers, staff in licensed children's residential sites, in-take/outreach workers)
  • Clinical staff
  • Housekeeping staff
  • Security staff
  • Administration personnel
  • Maintenance staff
  • Food service workers
  • Nursing staff

Corrections:

Eligible workplaces include adult correctional facilities and youth justice facilities in Ontario.

Eligible workers include:

  • Correctional officers
  • Youth services officers
  • Nurses
  • Healthcare staff
  • Social workers
  • Food service
  • Maintenance staff
  • Programming personnel
  • Administration personnel
  • Institutional liaison officers
  • TRILCOR personnel
  • Native inmate liaison officers
  • Chaplains

The province further expanded the list of eligible workers on April 28 to include the following Ontario Public Service Employees Union staff:

  • Respiratory therapists
  • Paramedics
  • Public health nurses
  • All addictions and mental health workers who, in a congregate setting, serve the same functions as workers in acute-care hospital settings previously noted as receiving pandemic pay.