A few days ago, one of the unions we represent contacted us with a problem: a major employer was continuing to demand that employees get notes from their doctors to take sick leave. They exempted employees with COVID-19 from this (the Employment Standards Act now bans note requirements in those cases anyway). Aside from the difficulties and risk of virus exposure for an employee going to a medical clinic just to satisfy an unreasonable employer, this was wasting precious medical resources that we all need available to help save victims of the coronavirus
We filed a complaint at the Labour Relations Board on Thursday afternoon, and with effective assistance from the Board we succeeded in obtaining the employer’s agreement late on Friday to suspend this practice and to cancel all outstanding demands for doctor’s notes issued in the past several weeks.
Here is a brief excerpt from our submission to the LRB:
In effect, the employers have decided that enforcement of their attendance management strategies to prevent instances of malingering have priority over urgent public needs in the allocation of medical services, when elective surgeries and other procedures have been cancelled en masse to clear the decks for the onslaught that is believed to be imminent. Organ transplants, hip replacements and colonoscopies have been postponed, but an employee suffering from a back ache must waste a physician’s time to satisfy the employer’s sick leave policy.
Employee compliance with the policy would entail attendance at a medical clinic, increasing the risk of spread of the virus, and divert the time, efforts and resources of a physician or other medical professionals away from the public health emergency, for purposes that are trivial in this context. Compliance would be an act of social irresponsibility and undermine pandemic strategies.
All of us have a role in helping our medical service providers and all of our essential workers to get us through the pandemic. Our own little role in that collective effort made for a very satisfying Saturday afternoon, when this was all wrapped up.
Stay healthy, everyone! We can beat this together.
This post contains information of a general nature. It is not intended as legal advice. For more information and legal advice please feel free to contact us