PSAC wants permission for many of its members to work from home

The biggest union in the federal public service wants permission for large numbers of its members to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) says this is the only way to slow the spread of novel coronavirus.

“Where telework is an option, we feel people should be asked, actually, to work from home, and not be using public transportation,” said the union’s national president, Chris Aylward.

For now, most public servants are still commuting to their offices. PSAC wants this to change.

Aylward said working from home is important because a large number of the 50,000 PSAC members in the capital region take public transit, and trains and buses force people to ride very close together.

“When you look at China, they only started off with 100 or 150 cases. So did Italy. And then this thing just balloons because people are in constant contact every day,” he said.

“That’s the kind of thing we are trying to avoid. They talk about social distancing — well, when you get on a bus, you can’t apply social distancing on a bus or the LRT.” PSAC is also asking for other measures, including masks and gloves for people in “front-line” jobs who meet the public in large numbers, such as airport staff and Service Canada, and training on how to use the equipment and how to dispose of it safely.

And PSAC wants “paid leave if they are going to self-isolate,” so that workers don’t run out of sick leave and either lose their paycheques or return to work in order to be paid.

He said the current system only gives such leave to workers if they can show they developed an infection in a work-related setting, such as travelling for work.

At present there’s no provision for extended sick leave if an employee has to go into isolation, he says. A sick worker who uses up his or her sick leave must take vacation days or unpaid leave, “which is totally unacceptable to us.”

“That’s so archaic. The government doesn’t seem to be putting in the measures to help flatten this curve at all.” (Flattening the curve refers to slowing the spread of the virus and avoiding a sudden surge.)

Better sick pay would protect the public as well as workers, he said.

JEAN LEVAC FILES PSAC national executive vice-president Chris Aylward wants the government to do more to protect the public service from the health and financial consequences of the novel coronavirus outbreak.