The B.C. government is tweaking its Employment Standards Act, which ensures that all B.C. workers are eligible for at least five paid sick days per year.
After a change to that law went into effect on Jan. 1, to include the new provision, business representatives identified cumbersome elements.
For example, the law said that employers were to provide employees with at least five paid sick days for each year following the employees' date of being hired. This meant that someone hired on Oct. 1 would get five days until the following Oct. 1. Employers were then expected to keep track of every employee's start dates.
This process is now changing so that employees are guaranteed at least five paid sick days for each calendar year. That means that employees hired on Oct. 1 are entitled to five sick days for the rest of the year, if needed. A new set of five eligible sick days are then provided on the following January 1.
These days do not accumulate, and must be taken within each calendar year, so if the person hired on Oct. 1 does not take any sick days for the rest of that year, the employee would have a total of five days starting Jan. 1.
The new paid-sick-days program affects more than one million workers, most of whom are in low-wage jobs. The new program does not affect workers who were already eligible for sick days through their employers.
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