New Amendments To Paid Sick Leave Under Employment Standards Act

Effective January 1, 2022, the BC government added employer-paid sick leave under BC's Employment Standards Act  ("ESA"). Previous RG updates have covered this topic, please see our articles on November 25, 2021, and January 26, 2022.

The BC government announced on Monday, March 28, 2022, that it would introduce further amendments to the ESA paid sick leave. Bill 19 introduces three changes:

• ESA paid sick leave is removed from the "meet or exceeds" table in section 3 of the ESA,  meaning unionized employers can no longer avoid the strict application of the ESA paid sick leave, regardless of their collective agreement provisions. Unionized employers will be required to provide the ESA paid sick leave or top-up any existing collective agreement provisions to the ESA paid sick leave entitlements.