After an amendment to this law came into force on January 1st, to include the new provision, business representatives identified cumbersome data. For example, the law required employers to provide employees with at least five paid sick days for each year after the employee was hired. This meant that someone hired on December 1st would have five days until the next December 1st. Employers then had to keep track of each employee’s start dates. This procedure is now changing so that employees have a guarantee of at least five days of sickness for each calendar year. This means that employees hired on December 1st are entitled to five sick days a month in December, if needed. A new set of five eligible sick days is then provided on the following January 1st. These days do not accumulate and must be taken within each calendar year, so if the person hired on December 1st does not take sick days in December, the employee will have a total of five days from January 1st. The new paid sick day program affects more than one million employees, most of whom work on low wages. The new program does not affect employees who were already entitled to sick days through their employers. Another adjustment to the Employment Standards Act concerned concerns that some workers were excluded from the full five paid sick days because of the language used in collective agreements. The change ensures that all employees are eligible. The law came into force in May 2021, when Victoria passed legislation requiring companies to temporarily provide three days of sick leave to each employee in the last seven months of 2021. Business owners had to tell the government how many of them the sick days it took workers to get $ 200 back for each of these days from the government, BC Labor Secretary Harry Baines told the BIV earlier this month. Bains said the county had allocated $ 320 million for these returns, but business owners were only claiming $ 13 million, or just over 4%. He explained that this was a low amount indicating that the impact on businesses was relatively small. Businesses may even have benefited because of gains in hiring, retention and productivity, he said. Business supporters, such as Canada’s Retail Council’s director of government relations, Greg Wilson, told the BIV that business owners were caught unawares when the CBA government on November 24 said that a new law providing for five paid sick days a year will take effect on January 1. The government had promised to provide at least six months notice of any new operating expenses the government was deducting from the companies. The government does not provide any financial assistance to companies to cover the cost of providing sick days from 1 January. Bains said the government had told businesses in mid-2021 that the change would take place by the end of the year, although he did not say what the change would be. Victoria earlier this month also announced plans to raise the minimum wage to $ 15.65 an hour from June 1. [email protected] @GlenKorstrom
