Olivia Katz on the challenges she and other poor people faced long before we even heard of Covid. “These are not recent discoveries, Stephen McNeil knows all of this, he just doesn’t care. These outcomes are a matter of policy, his policy.”
When journalists recently asked whether the Nova Scotia government is willing to institute paid sick days in Nova Scotia, premier Stephen McNeil flat out refused. There’s a federal program that takes care of it, he said. That’s not quite how it works, NDP labour critic Kendra Coombes tells the Nova Scotia Advocate.
Press release: Nova Scotia Federation of Labour President Danny Cavanagh is calling on the McNeil Liberals to amend Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code to include at least ten paid sick days.
Not quite a Labour Day march, but a rally earlier today in support of 10 paid sick days in Nova Scotia drew close to 100 people to downtown Halifax.
PSA: Stephen McNeil has refused to work with the federal government to grant all workers access to paid sick leave. Now is the time to let the province know that we can’t fight COVID-19 without guaranteeing each worker in the province access to ten paid sick days a year.
Danny Cavanagh: “We continue to be baffled by the assumption in the reopening plan that all families have the resources to simply “stay the blazes home” when their students exhibit symptoms of COVID-19.”
Danny Cavanagh looks at the changes announced last week to Employment Insurance. On face value, it looks like these changes may be a relief for some workers in the short term, but there’s lots of room for much needed improvements.
The Halifax Workers’ Action Centre (Halifax-WAC) is renewing its call for the Labour Standards Code to be amended to guarantee employees paid sick leave.
Premier Stephen McNeil wants workers looking for paid sick leave to join a union and engage in the collective bargaining process. He made the call at yesterday’s COVID-19 press conference.
The NS NDP is right, it’s time to change the Labour Standards Code so that everybody gets at least six paid sick days per year. And yes, let’s get rid of doctors sick notes, a senseless practice that Doctors Nova Scotia as well would like to see the end of, writes Danny Cavanagh, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour.