Paid vaccination leave will speed up the process

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/05/2021 (1613 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EVERYONE agrees that if we’re going to defeat COVID-19, every Manitoban needs a vaccine as quickly as possible.

Everyone, that is, except Premier Brian Pallister.

Last week, Alberta decided (with bipartisan support) to give workers three hours of employer-paid time off to roll up their sleeve and get a vaccine. That leaves Manitoba as the sole western province where people are forced to choose between getting vaccinated in their spare time or taking unpaid time off work.

Removing obstacles to vaccination should not be a partisan issue. The conservative premier of Saskatchewan helped boost vaccination rates with paid vaccination leave more than a month ago. Pallister’s inaction on paid vaccination leave is at least part of the reason why Manitoba has the country’s second-lowest vaccination rate.

When pressed on the issue, Manitoba Finance Minister Scott Fielding said he hasn’t “heard that it has been a problem” and paid time off for vaccination could be something to “look into if (difficulty getting time off) does become a major problem.”

There are at least two very dangerous assumptions built into this dismissal of paid vaccination leave. For starters, under no circumstances should the provincial public-health response rely on what cabinet ministers hear in the rumour mill. We can be confident that Fielding doesn’t know which precarious workers in Flin Flon are being refused time off from their minimum-wage job to be vaccinated.

More disturbing is Fielding’s stance that his government is taking a wait-and-see approach to mass vaccination (worrisome, but not out of line with the Progressive Conservative government’s wider handling of the pandemic).

Manitobans don’t need a government that sits back and waits for systemic inequalities to manifest in unequal access to vaccination. Pallister must be proactive by removing every barrier to rapid vaccination and bringing in measures that are now the standard in western Canada.

The fact is Manitoba employers are just like employers everywhere else: they are cautious about wages and profit margins, and they aren’t going to suddenly wake up and implement generous vaccine leave without a legislated provincial standard.

COVID-19 is a public health crisis, not the Grey Cup. Workers shouldn’t need to cross their fingers and hope for time off. When it comes to their health, workers cannot rely on the whims and charity of their employers.

Manitobans have the second-lowest household disposable income in Western Canada. Put differently, taking unpaid time off work to get vaccinated has a heavier price for Manitobans than most other Canadians. Maybe Pallister thinks he is being loyal to his wealthy business donors, who may not relish the idea of paying workers to go get vaccinated.

If so, he has grossly misread the economics of vaccination. The longer it takes to get every Manitoban vaccinated, the longer it will be before consumer spending rebounds. Mass vaccination, as fast as possible, is not only a public-health strategy, it is an economic growth strategy. Paid vaccination leave is the least Pallister can do, and would be a key tactic in the return to normalcy.

There are many public-health lessons to be learned from the pandemic. Surging workplace infections have demonstrated that a lack of employer-paid sick leave means many workers feel they can’t stay home when they’re sick.

Paid vaccination leave will help accelerate the end of the pandemic, and a provincial paid sick leave policy will help prevent the next pandemic from taking hold.

Gavin McGarrigle is the western regional director for Unifor.