Covid 19 coronavirus: Increasing paid sick leave is key to fighting virus

COMMENTARY:

Raise your hand if you ever went to work while you were feeling bad because you were not on sick leave or felt it was not serious enough to warrant a sick day.

Okay, I can’t see all the raised hands, but I guess there are a lot and it’s not just me. Over the years, I’ve gone through my fair share of tissues from my work stationery closet, battling colds and all kinds of other bugs, telling myself I was fine, thinking I was being smart about saving my sick leave for more valuable illnesses. .

Those days are over.

In the post-Covid world, we know that such things are not appropriate. If we feel sick, we should stay home. We know better so we can do better, but we can’t do it unless the government steps in to help make that happen.

Statistics for the first months of life during the pandemic show that staying home reduced the spread of Covid-19, but also other contagious diseases such as the flu. We know that when it comes to viruses, staying away from others is key to stopping the spread.

However, employees, and low-income people in particular, will have a hard time staying home when needed on just five days of paid sick leave a year.

Financial worries will drag us to workplaces across the country and we will carry our germs with us, because we have bills to pay and we cannot risk our livelihood.

We cannot risk people avoiding a Covid-19 test for fear that they will be told to isolate themselves and are concerned if they can afford it.

Workers with dependent children will fight even harder. Those children will get sick and the only way to stop the spread is to keep them home and have an adult stay home with them.

Kiwi parents have known for a long time that five days of sick leave is not nearly enough. You end up using them on your kid’s bugs and there aren’t any left for when you’re sick. So you grab some nurofen and go to work, hoping no one tries to make small talk or ask you very difficult questions as you struggle to keep your eyes open and daydream about going back to bed.

If the government wants us to stay home when we are not well, it must provide us with the means to do so.

A petition seeking better sick leave rights was presented to the government earlier this week.

Signed by 10,000 people, the petition seeks changes such as increasing the legal minimum paid sick leave from five to 10 days.

Last month, the government announced that employers will no longer have to prove that their income has been reduced by 30 percent in order for staff who have to self-isolate due to Covid-19 testing to enter their scheme. license support. The scheme means that workers receive the equivalent of the wage subsidy.

It is a good step but it is not enough.

Learning to live with the threat of Covid-19 will be tricky, but we already know some of the things that definitely work. Self-isolation is the “word of the day” these days for a reason: because it works.

The Government knows better: it is time to do better.