Green Party fights to legislate 10 paid sick days in New Brunswick

Green Party Leader David Coon’s bill to provide all New Brunswick workers with access to paid sick days heard testimony in front of the law amendments committee Thursday.

"This will mostly, of course, benefit people on low wages, low income and minimum wage jobs,” Coon said.

Currently, legislation in New Brunswick only assures five unpaid sick days that protect workers from being fired.

"People actually go to work sick because they can't take time off without pay,” said Janelle LeBlanc, President of N.B. Common Front for Social Justice. “They have to cover rent and other expenses like groceries, electricity and everything is going up and they just can't lose their wages for that day.”

Union leaders want to ensure government won’t be subsidizing the sick benefits of large corporations.

"Small businesses and medium-sized businesses will require some type of financial support for these types of benefits to protect their workers and ensure their safety,” said N.B. CUPE President Stephen Drost. “However, there are multinational and other large corporations that have done extremely well before the pandemic and they were doing great before that.”

But the business community has concerns.

"In our opinion, our paid sick leave should be left to the market to decide and not have this competitive advantage swept aside by government,” said Morgan Peters with the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. “Additionally, because the Employment Standards Act prevails over collective bargaining agreements and sick leave is often a negotiated piece of these agreements, all of these would have to be examined under that new regime.”

The chamber says only two other provinces have legislated paid sick leave: Prince Edward Island and British Columbia.

The law amendments committee will issue a report to the legislative assembly on the proposed legislation.