What you need to know about Paid Sick Leaves

A lot of things have changed in workplaces since March 2020 when the COVID 19 pandemic began. Remote work has become a very real part of most of our work lives at least some of the time and we have all become a lot more familiar with platforms like zoom. There have also been provincially regulated changes such as the requirement on employer to provide paid sick days.  A further change is about to be implemented for federal regulated employees. Previously, employees who were federally regulated were entitled to 3 days of paid leave per year for personal illness or injury.  A new medical leave will replace this personal leave with the following requirements:

• After 30 days of continuous employment employees are entitled to 3 days of medical leave with pay
• After the first month of employment, employees continue to earn one day of leave for each month of work, up to a maximum of 10 days of leave each calendar year
• Any unused days of medical leave are carried forward to the next calendar year, but the max of 10 days of paid medical leave for each calendar year continues to apply
• Employers can require employees to take medical leave as a full day
• If an employee is on leave for 5 or more days an employer can require a medical certificate
• There are record keeping responsibilities on the employer with respect to each period of medical leave.

For federally regulated employees it will be important to update your sick leave and personal leave policies prior to the December 1 change to the legislation to ensure that your policies reflect the new statutory requirements.

Have questions pertaining to paid sick leave policies?  Contact Rose Keith, KC at [email protected] or anyone else from our team listed on the Authors page.