Paul Murphy: Calls Three-Day Sick Leave 'Extremely Meagre'

Thanks a lot. Yeah, I confirmed that, Deputy Bruton. Just to start, obviously, we do welcome the introduction of a right to statutory sick leave in this country. It's a good thing that we're going to have it, even if it is extremely overdue and even if it is really a lot, lot less than what we need to have, what workers deserve in this country. Ireland has been an extreme outlier in not providing any statutory sick leave, just as is the case in terms of the lack of the right to collective bargaining or trade union recognition. It is, you know, striking that it took a global pandemic to force the government to act in the very meagre way that it is acting in terms of three days and so on. But still, we welcome the introduction of statutory sick leave. They do that what is offered now, what is being presented in terms of the bill falls extremely short of what is needed. Like what is actually provided for in the bill is three days of paid leave. The Tawnaiste said, government will respond and say, well, don't worry, we're going to increase that. We have a plan to increase it initially to five days and eventually to ten days. But the truth is that if the bill passes unamended, we only have the Tawnaiste and the government's word to go for on that. We have no guarantee that that's ever actually going to happen. And when you look at the bill and you look at the very wide loophole open to this government or open to future governments, actually, and not to follow up and increase the number of paid sick leave days, it would raise very serious concern. Section 6.1 says that in considering whether to increase the number of statutory sick days, the Minister will have regard to, quote, the state of the economy generally, the business environment and national competitiveness. It also refers to, quote, the potential for any disproportionate or other adverse impact on the economy generally, specific sectors of the economy, employers or employees, and, quote, the views of employer representative bodies. There's no guarantee here that we ever go up from the three days, and if it passes unamended, well, then it will require significant continued pressure from the trade union movement to say that we, to at least ensure that we do get the ten days by 2025, as promised by the department during the pre-legative scrutiny. Let's imagine even that we get there, we get to the ten days of paid leave. We will still be far behind what is normal in much of Europe. Take the example of Austria, a similar sized country to Ireland, workers are entitled to between 10 and 16 weeks, weeks, not days, of paid sick leave on 100% pay. In the Netherlands, workers are entitled to receive 70% of their wages for up to two years when they are on sick leave. The other point is the level of sick pay that's being proposed here. Again, for some reason, it's not actually contained within the bill itself, but what the government says will be introduced as 70% of pay up to a maximum of 110 euros a day. So what we're starting with, and all we have a guarantee from from the bill, is that workers can get a maximum of 330 euros sick pay a year in the first year of the scheme. That's less than a week's worth of the enhanced illness benefit, which has been widely and correctly criticised for being too little for many low paid workers to avoid falling behind on rent and bills. And in reality, many workers who are able to avail of this scheme will be entitled to significantly less than 330 euros. That's because many of the workers with no access to sick pay at the moment are low paid or minimum wage workers who earn much less than the national median weekly earnings on which the 110 euros ceiling is based. Take the example of a full-time minimum wage worker. They will be entitled to only 171 euros and 36 cents in sick pay a year. 170 euros a year they're going to get, certainly in the first year of this scheme. And then out of that, we know that they're going to have to pay the 50 or 60, more likely these days, euros cost of getting a mandatory medical certificate from a doctor each time that they are sick. So if they were sick three times for three days, one day for one day each effectively, it's all wiped out. It's worth absolutely nothing to them. There's also no provision in the bill for index linking sick pay to the spiralling cost of living. It's the biggest political issue right now, it's the biggest issue in society for people, is how all their costs are going through the roof. It was reported during pre-legative scrutiny that this could be provided for by ministerial order. But again, if it's the intention to do it, why don't we have it in the bill before us? Why don't we ensure that it's actually going to happen? Instead of setting arbitrary limits on the level of sick pay that workers are entitled to, every worker should be entitled to nothing less than 100% of their full wages for every day that they are sick. It's a basic issue in terms of respect, decency and decent conditions for workers. If you don't accept that, if employers are going to insist on medical certificates and the government is going to back that up, will then, at the very least, workers shouldn't be left paying for those medical certs. We think employers should have to pay for medical certs, but failing that, the idea that the state should intervene and assist with the costs. But we oppose this idea of having a mandatory requirement for sick pay certificates. It's in the bill, I think, as a SOP to employers who hope that the requirement to get a sick cert will discourage people from staying at home when they are sick. Is that what we want to achieve? Do we want there to be continued pressure for people to go into work when they are sick? Do we want that to happen at a time when we have been through two years of a pandemic, of a highly infectious disease, when we know that there were, in certain workplaces, certainly workers felt the pressure to go in to work when they were sick, and potentially had quite catastrophic effects in terms of the spreading of COVID through workplaces? We all heard the stories in terms of workers taking paracetamol to bring their temperatures down to ensure that they could work even though that they were sick. So why on earth would we make it difficult at all for workers to claim sick page? The evidence is that workers aren't working because they want to, like, scan the system, because they're going to go and pretend that they're sick all the time, whatever. The evidence isn't there. For example, you look at the experience in the public sector. It's not some widespread problem. So why on earth is the government forcing people to risk spreading infectious diseases at the doctor's surgery, on public transport on the way to the doctor's surgery, just so that they can access sick pay. The final criticism I would make is similar to Deputy Bruton, is the requirement to be in employment with the same employer for 13 continuous weeks. The effect of that is to exclude many of the most vulnerable workers that the government precisely claims to be trying to protect. There's no rationale for it. You know, we don't say that workers are worthy of less protections in other spheres of their working rights, because they've only been working in a place for a certain amount of time. Why on earth would we deny them the right to sick pay in the first three months of their work? ICTU have highlighted how this will hit women and migrant workers in particular. They wrote to the Tánaiste and they pointed out, quote, it will leave hundreds of thousands of mostly women and foreign-born essential workers employed in low-pay jobs who routinely have their service broken by their employer without coverage for three months each year. End quote. This happens all the time in childcare, for example, when workers who are 98% female are let go over the summer holidays and then rehired in September. So they'll lose out on protection in two periods throughout the course of the year. You will also hit young workers, more than a third of whom are on temporary contracts. You can't choose not to get sick because you've started a new job, because you're on a temporary contract, or because your employer has broken your service. Again, it will just mean that there are more workers, in this case vulnerable workers, who feel under pressure to go into work when they're sick. And, like, the bottom line point is that isn't just not good for the individual worker, it's not good for other co-workers, it's not good for society at large to have those sort of pressures existing. It's precisely the logic of why we're saying that there needs to be sick pay. Every worker must be entitled to full sick pay on 100% of wages from day one. That should be the basic position. And the number of statutory sick leave days must be radically increased to cover every day a worker is sick. This isn't over from our point of view, there obviously has been a lot of discussion, a lot of discussion in the committee, and we will be putting forward amendments, and I presume others will be too, to try to improve this bill, to ensure that workers get as good sick pay legislation as possible out of this bill. Thanks. Thank you Deputy. Thank you. Thank you.