London NDP MPP proposes bill to guarantee paid sick leave for Ontario workers

NPD MPP for London West Peggy Sattler is tabling laws that will see Ontario employees get seven assured paid sick days and an extra 14 paid sick days throughout an infectious illness emergency.

The “Keep Dwelling if you’re Sick Act” offers a framework for paid sick go away throughout and after the pandemic and can be tabled within the Ontario Legislature on Tuesday afternoon.

The transfer comes 9 months into the continued coronavirus pandemic and at some extent the place Ontario is seeing every day case numbers near the two,000 mark.

“These are the employees we’ve got relied on probably the most in the course of the pandemic and they’re additionally on the highest charge of publicity,” Sattler stated.

“Once they get sick or their little one wakes up with a sore throat they have to make an unattainable alternative as a result of staying dwelling to get well or care for his or her little one means giving up their paycheque.”

Sattler stated with the risking case numbers “it’s all to clear how harmful it’s when employees should lose their pay to remain dwelling when they’re sick.”

The brand new invoice would make the go away versatile for particular person employees’ well being care wants, and would broaden upon the three unpaid sick days already assured below the Employment Requirements Act.

Sattler additionally famous that the paid sick days would apply to all employees, together with these labeled as part-time so long as that they had accomplished at the least one week of labor.

First rate Work and Well being Community estimates least 60 per cent of all employees in Ontario do not need paid sick days, which Sattler stated is very the case if they’ve a decrease wage, comparable to grocery retailer clerks, cleaners, or a PSW.

“Each day in our observe we see individuals who can’t take sick days just because they will’t afford to,” stated  Carolina Jimenez, a registered nurse and coordinator of the First rate Work and Well being Community.

Jimenez stated a research by the community additionally confirmed that for these in low-income occupations, the share of labor with out paid sick go away is over 70 per cent, and that the quantity is even larger for ladies.

“Staff who’re denied paid sick days are literally those who want it probably the most. They’re my sufferers working in lower-wage precarious jobs, who’re disproportionately girls, migrant, Black, and Indigenous employees.”

Sattler famous that one in every of Doug Ford’s first acts as premier was to eradicate paid sick days for employees, and the federal authorities’s Canada Restoration Illness Profit is a short lived stopgap that’s solely obtainable to employees who qualify and that may finish subsequent summer time.

“It’s all too clear how harmful it’s when employees should lose their paycheque to remain dwelling when they’re sick,” Sattler stated.

“If they’re coming down with the flu, they will’t afford to remain dwelling in mattress. In the event that they go for a COVID-19 take a look at, they will’t afford to attend at dwelling for the outcomes. And when going to work sick is the one choice, it places us all in danger.”