Banked sick days a way for seriously ill workers to survive

Letters to the Editor (The Cape Breton Post), Published on June 24, 2013

When facing internal scandal, it’s become a pattern for the Conservative government to attack public workers.

The most recent salvo was an unwarranted and misleading attack from Treasury Board President Tony Clement on federal employees’ use of sick leave. This type of ideology-driven attack distracts Canadians from the actual ailments plaguing the Conservative government.

Let’s look at the facts and diagnose the real symptoms.

For instance, consider workers’ collectively bargained right to bank sick days. Contrary to false impressions generated by the Conservative attack on public workers, banking sick days is not a perk. Employees cannot “cash them out” and cannot benefit from them when they retire.

It’s a mechanism designed to address a very serious problem: Workers who develop chronic or serious long-term illnesses. Ultimately, they can apply for long-term disability, but there’s a period of up to 13 weeks (65 working days) before disability insurance kicks in.

Banked sick days help workers get by during this period. If they don’t have banked sick days, it means a dramatic drop in salary for them at a time when they’re dealing with the greatest hardship they and their family will probably ever face. Banked sick days aren’t a luxury. They’re a way for seriously ill workers and their families to survive.

The federal Conservatives have publicized a lot of misleading and inaccurate statistics. The “averages” they cite are misleading because they include not just workers who get sick for short periods of time, but also workers with chronic illnesses and those who are phasing into long-term disability programs.

With this type of statistical sleight-of-hand, the Conservative government is able to use a small number of workers who legitimately require extra support to make it appear as though all workers are taking excessive amounts of sick leave.

The fact is, most workers take zero to eight days of sick leave per year; numbers commensurate with other workers in Canada.

The Conservatives claim federal workers take more sick leave than their counterparts in the private sector. There’s a reason for that which speaks directly to the failures of the Conservative government to bolster and strengthen this country’s health and labour standards.

When non-unionized private-sector employees wind up with serious, chronic illnesses, many of them don’t have sick leave or long-term disability protections and are forced to quit their jobs.

It’s cruel and inhumane for workers who get cancer, heart disease and other illnesses to be forced out of the workforce by their employers just at the time when they are most in need of support. But that’s the cruel reality for many private-sector employees.

What we need to do is work together — the public and private sectors — to strengthen labour standards and workers’ rights in this country, and ensure no worker is forced to endure the loss of a job on top of a chronic and life-threatening illness.

Instead, the Conservative government is trying to divide us. It’s important that we don’t fall for this divisive ploy. Sick leave and long-term disability are fundamental rights for every worker in Canada.

Given recent sweeping federal job cuts, many workers are actually afraid to use sick days, lest they be considered unreliable and become targets. The result is sick workers endangering themselves, their workplaces, and the public by coming to work when they are too ill to do so.

We also know that government cuts to jobs, programs and services have led to an increase in mental illness in the workplace. There’s been a surge in calls to the federal employee assistance program, dozens of which have been flagged as suicide risks.

We can’t fire elected bosses, which is what Clement is, but we can say this: These days members of Parliament and senators can’t hold a candle to public-sector workers. We’re the ones holding down the fort, serving the public every day and forever doing more with less.
Their attempt to drag us through the mud is unfair, irresponsible and downright sick.

Jeannie Baldwin, regional executive vice-president
Public Service Alliance of Canada