Demands of the Decent Work and Health Network

Comprehensive measures required to protect the public, contain COVID-19, and prepare for future outbreaks

Ensuring that the public has the financial means to follow public health advice in light of the COVID-19 pandemic must be a top priority for all levels of government. Our patients must have the financial support to follow medical advice, whether that means practicing social distancing, isolating, caring for kids whose schools have been cancelled, or missing work due to public health closures. 

Our patients who work in low-wage sectors and precarious employment do not have the financial security to stay at home and forgo wages. This means many workers in some of Canada’s largest sectors, including food service, care work, and the gig economy, are forced to go to work even in ill health. Without adequate protections, those most vulnerable in the labour market are facing the harshest economic consequences and risk high infectious transmission rates of COVID-19.

We need to ensure that every patient, no matter what job they have, how much they earn, or immigration status, has the financial ability to follow public health recommendations to stay home. Too many do not have that option; better protections for workers and workplaces is therefore critical.

This is why we continue to call upon the federal government and all provincial governments to immediately bring in a comprehensive package of emergency measures ensuring we can contain the spread of COVID-19 and protect the public against future outbreaks.

The federal and all provincial governments must immediately:

1. Implement at least 7 paid sick days for all workers on a permanent basis. Provide an additional 14 paid sick days during public health emergencies like COVID-19 crisis. 

Our patients need a minimum of 7 paid sick days so that they can afford to stay home when they are sick. This must be a permanent measure. The medical literature consistently states that employees with no sick leave are more likely to go to work sick and expose others to infection. 

During public health crises like COVID-19, workers need an additional 14 paid sick days so that they can isolate and stay home as required to contain viral transmission. 

A study on the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in the US, a country with no national paid sick day policy, found that 8 million people went to work while infected, spreading the illness to an additional 7 million people.

Since workers get a full day’s wage when they take a paid sick day, our patients would be in a much stronger financial position to follow medical and public health advice if they were already enacted instead of a supplementary benefit.

2. Prevent employers from asking workers to provide doctors’ notes when they access sick days or emergency leave as a permanent measure.

When our patients are required to get sick notes to access sick days or emergency leave, they unnecessarily fill emergency rooms and waiting rooms. Instead of being at home resting, they are exposing other patients to contagions. This is an unnecessary public health risk and stressor to our already overburdened healthcare system.

The federal government must immediately:

3. Implement emergency measures to increase access to Employment Insurance (EI)

Ease the harsh EI qualifying rules that require workers to have as many as 700 hours of work before accessing EI benefits. All workers should be eligible for EI sickness and regular benefits after working 360 hours.

Waive the one-week waiting period during which EI benefits are not normally payable, on a retroactive basis. Benefits should be payable from the first day of isolation. The one-week waiting period was waived for sickness benefits on March 11, but not for all EI benefits.

Waive the requirement for a medical certificate. Those advised to quarantine should not be visiting doctors or clinics merely for a medical note. The waiving of the medical certificate requirement for EI sickness benefits was announced on March 18.

Establish a special hotline to give consistent and accurate information and provide assistance in different languages including, but not limited to, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Farsi. 

Expedite EI Work Sharing applications and institute flexibilities for workplaces considering reduced hours. Work sharing agreements must be facilitated to help prevent permanent job loss by allowing workers to share available hours. Enhancements to the Work-Sharing program were announced on March 11. 

4. An adequate emergency fund for those experiencing a loss or interruption of earnings and who cannot access EI

Workers who cannot access EI supports or who have exhausted their benefits, but who are experiencing an interruption in or loss of earnings as a result  – indirectly or directly – of COVID-19 urgently need access to a non-repayable living allowance. We echo calls from worker advocates for a minimum payment of $573 per week under all federal support programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Workers in precarious employment are less likely to have access to EI supports for sickness and regular benefits. Many workers are misclassified as self-employed or independent contractors. Misclassification is all too common in service sectors like cleaning, food delivery, the gig economy, business services, and health care. Misclassified workers have no access to EI or to job-protected, unpaid, sickness or emergency leave.

Racialized, newcomer, women, and other workers facing systemic discrimination in the labour market are over-represented in part-time and precarious employment and are therefore less likely to have access to EI benefits or be protected by voluntary paid sick leave policies. 

On March 18, the federal government announced new financial supports for workers during the COVID-19 crisis. This will help many of our patients who previously had no options for coping with loss of income. However, we are concerned that the amount of the benefit will be inadequate for many people to follow our medical advice. Read more here.

All levels of government – including all public institutions and agencies within their respective purviews – must:

5. Make it crystal clear that racism and xenophobia will not be tolerated 

As we learned during the SARS crisis, workers in the service, grocery, and hospitality sectors are particularly hard-hit by misinformation, racism, and xenophobia. Such workers—especially Chinese, East Asian, Iranian, and other groups of racialized workers—are more likely to experience loss of income during a pandemic, even if only through layoffs and reductions in hours of work as demand for services plummets. 

Public officials must be directed to do everything possible to combat racism and xenophobia within their institutions and to protect workers from the consequences of this prejudice.