Report Calls For 10 Paid Sick Days For Every N.S. Worker
HALIFAX—If you get sick in Nova Scotia, it’s more likely than not you can’t stay home without financial consequences.
A new report shows that more than half of working people (54 percent) in the province don’t have access to paid sick leave. The authors say the province needs to make paid sick leave mandatory—and that employers should foot the bill.
Rachel Brickner is a professor at Acadia University and one of the report’s co-authors.
She says paid sick days are important because they give people the social and financial freedom to properly rest and recover when they get ill, suffer a minor injury, or have to take a sick kid to the doctor.
“It’s important for us to be able to do those things without being in this situation where we have to make a decision between going to work and not getting paid,” she says.
Worse Access For Young, Low-Wage, And Less-Educated Workers
The report highlights how that decision is usually harder for people with less secure work.
Younger workers, workers who are single, have high school education or less, or earn less than $25,000 have the least access to paid sick leave in Nova Scotia. Permanent, full-time, and unionized jobs are much more likely to offer paid sick days.
“So, people who are already kind of struggling already are hit with this other thing,” Brickner says.
Part of Brickner and her colleagues’ research looked at paid sick leave in three “essential” fields: teachers, long-term care workers, and retail workers. Brickner stressed that the survey wasn’t a representative sample but said the data still provides important insights.
Every teacher and about 80 percent of the long-term care workers who took part were unionized, compared to only seven percent of retail workers.
Nearly every teacher and long-term care worker had access to paid sick leave, while less than half of retail workers did.
And 41 percent of retail workers without paid sick leave said they have gone to work sick. Nine out of 10 said they did because they needed the money.
“This emphasizes the need for paid sick leave, particularly among precariously employed workers and those in low-wage positions,” the report reads.
Labour Law Changes Would Mean Universal Access
The difference between who does or doesn’t have reliable access to paid sick days is why Bricker and her co-authors argue paid sick leave should be written directly into Nova Scotia’s labour law. That way, every worker would have the same access.
“You shouldn’t be able to have a cold if you work in one location, but not have the ability to have a cold and stay home if you work somewhere else. It really is something that everybody should have access to,” she says.
The report calls for 10 days of paid sick days a year for every worker in Nova Scotia. It says those days should be easy to use and that employers, not the government, should pay for them.
“Employers should not have the right to employ workers under conditions that compromise health and safety and then pass the costs off to the public,” the report reads.
The report also argues employer-provided paid sick leave reduces the possibility of gaps in pay, which is especially important for lower-wage workers.
Employers Benefit From Paid Sick Leave
Brickner says it also makes sense for employers to offer paid sick days because research suggests they benefit when employees have them.
Studies show people with access to paid sick days have better overall productivity, are less likely to get injured at work, are less likely to leave their job, and are less likely to spread sickness at work.
This appears to play out in places that have mandated some form of paid sick days.
After paid sick days became law in New York, 86 percent of employers reported no impact on their costs. Ninety-one percent reported no impact on hiring and 98 percent said abuse of sick days wasn’t a problem.
“So, if it’s a benefit to the employer, it’s also something they ought to have some responsibility for providing to their employees,” rather than shifting that cost to taxpayers, Brickner says.
The provincial government introduced a temporary paid sick leave program in May, funded with taxpayer money. That program expired at the end of July.
Neither the Nova Scotia Liberal nor PC parties mention paid sick leave in their election platforms. The provincial NDP, meanwhile, say they will require all employers to give workers 10 paid sick days each year.