With just under 200 countries in the world, any nation that falls outside the top 145 on a categorical list that ranks them from ‘excellent’ to ‘needs improvement’ should really take that latter recommendation literally.
Like Ontario, which, if it were a country (its population of 13.6 million isn’t exactly small), ranks among the worst places on the planet to staple your hand to a floorboard and have a looming spreadsheet ripe for data entry due the next afternoon.
At least 145 countries around the world and 23 jurisdictions in North America give workers paid sick days. Ontario is not one of them. In fact, many employees aren’t even afforded the luxury of being sick and not getting paid.
According to the Toronto Star, businesses with 50 or more employees must give workers 10 days of unpaid emergency leave. Those with 50 workers or less do not have to give staff a single, unpaid, job-protected sick day, per the province’s Employment Standards Act.
Ten days of unpaid sick leave is pretty abysmal given the potential scope of an ’emergency’, but no days at all is criminal.
By comparison, employers in New York City with five or more workers must provide up to five paid sick days; employees in San Francisco earn between five and nine paid sick days after three months on the job depending on the size of their company. Paid sick leave in Germany, meanwhile, is six weeks, during which you will continue to receive your full salary. A further 98 countries guarantee one month or more of paid sick days.
The situation leaves 1.6 million Ontario workers vulnerable to being legally fired for taking an unpaid day off when they are ill or enduring an emergency. Most affected are those who work low-wage, precarious service sector jobs, so just keep in mind that whoever prepares your next meal couldn’t stay home with Laryngitis even if they did have a voice to call in sick. This isn’t just about the benefit for those who are sick, after all – it concerns everyone’s well-being.
“For the health of those patients and for the health of the public it’s imperative that (workers) stay home when they’re sick,” said Dr. Kate Hayman, an emergency room physician with the University Health Network, very reasonably.
“But often if they’re low earners, it’s not a financial decision they can make.”
Last year over 700 medical professionals signed a petition calling for the provincial government to urgently reform its outdated employment legislation. With four months having passed since the petition was presented to Queen’s Park, we can assume government officials have disregarded its urgency, if not its sentiments entirely.
A survey of “unstable” workers in the GTA reveals the impact of Ontario’s disregard for sick employees. Less than 12 per cent got paid if they missed a day’s work, with 32 per cent saying they’d fear for their job security if they raised health or safety issues. Over a third of respondents admitted they felt depressed because of work and considered their health “less than good” on the job.
“I would struggle to think of a shift that goes by where I don’t have at least one patient where work is negatively impacting on their health,” says Hayman.
That one patient is at least doing what most people who are sick are too intimidated to do. A recent study in the United States determined that those without paid sick leave are three times more likely to forgo medical care.
That’s not the type of scenario you want in Canada, whose access to healthcare is the envy of the world.
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