Labour and Employment Law Blog

Further to our previous blog post on paid sick days, the British Columbia government has just announced amendments to paid sick days under the Employment Standards Act. The amendments are:

• Calendar Year: The current language in the Act says that employees are entitled to five paid sick days in “each employment year.” This was administratively burdensome for employers to track, as it was based on an employee’s start date. The Act is now being amended to reference “calendar year,” which standardizes the annual entitlement period for all employees regardless of the start of their employment.
• Collective Agreements: The amendments remove paid personal illness or injury leave from those sections of the Act that can be contracted out of by parties to a collective agreement. This means that the paid personal illness or injury leave requirements of the Act are minimum requirements that apply even if a collective agreement contains provisions that meet or exceed those requirements.