TIRE TYRANTS

Michelin sure to try to block the way to permanent paid sick leave in NS

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PAID SICK DAYS ARE BACK IN NOVA SCOTIA. For a while at least. But a law requiring all employers to provide paid sick days remains about as likely as catching a blue 100 pound lobster in the Halifax Public Gardens duck pond.

Nova Scotia reinstated its paid sick leave program on January 10. But it includes a few quirks. First, workers will be able to be off sick for four days without loss in pay—but only if they are suffering from COVID-19. Second, it is up to the employer to apply to the program. Third, the program will run out on March 31

Too many restrictions

“It’s all very complicated,” said NDP MLA Susan LeBlanc. “What would make way more sense is paid sick days no matter what, not related to COVID and not for this weird amount of time.”

The NDP along with the Nova Scotia Federation of labour are renewing calls for Nova Scotia to legislate 10 permanent paid sick days for all workers.

“Something is better than nothing,” said LeBlanc. “But we can do a lot better.”

Michelin calls the tune

Doing something better in Nova Scotia, like making 10 paid sick days a year the law, depends on one thing, and one thing only, says journalism professor Steve Kimber. In a recent column in the Halifax Examiner Kimber writes that it is the Michelin Tire corporation that is that one thing.

Michelin is the largest private sector employer in Nova Scotia, with 3300 workers in three plants.

The company came to Nova Scotia in 1969, enticed by $89 million in government grants, plus low-interest loans, tax breaks, fast write-offs on all land and building costs and what Kimber calls “various sorts of other financial jiggery-pokery.”

Anti-union with a passion

During the company’s first decade in Nova Scotia, governments of different political stripes passed three separate pieces of major legislation specifically aimed at making it as difficult as possible for Michelin workers to join a union. There have been many union drives over the past 52 years, by many unions—some more than once. All have failed so far.

When Stephen McNeil’s Liberals defeated the NDP in 2013, one of their first orders of business was to repeal the NDP legislation that had provided for first contract arbitration should any workers ever vote union.

Kimber writes: “I tell you all of this, in part, because any hope the current Houston government will make its temporary COVID sick leave program permanent hinges largely on the views of big employers, none bigger than Michelin.

“If Michelin objects — and it will — then that won’t happen.

A policy mystery

“According to the employees I spoke with, Michelin employees are allowed to take two consecutive sick days a year at 2/3 of their regular wage. If they work eight-hour shifts, that means they can claim two consecutive shifts, or two days. But if they happen to normally work 12-hour shifts, as many Michelin employees do, the company counts just one 12-hour shift as two different days. One shift and your two days’ sick leave have been used up.

“Are you with me?

“If an employee has to take those two days’ sick leave within one calendar year, then they don’t qualify for paid sick leave for the whole next year. Not that the company tells them that upfront.

“They only find out they don’t qualify after they’re sick.

“The employees told me there is no written, easily accessible sick leave policy they can consult.”

The struggle continues

The hard reality in Nova Scotia is that as seemingly arbitrary and secretive as the Michelin semi-paid sick days policy is, it is still better than the three unpaid sick days the Nova Scotia Labour Standards legislation normally requires employers to provide.

It is this reality that unites all labour activists in the province in their drive to let the air out of Michelin’s tires and force the government to transform the temporary, government-funded, four-day maximum COVID sick leave program into a “universal, paid, adequate permanent, accessible, employer provided” paid sick leave of up to 10 days a year without the requirement of a doctor’s note.

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