Sick leave has emerged as one of the key sticking points in negotiations between unionized education workers and the province as they seek a deal.
This week Education Minister Stephen Lecce, in the context of discussions about a possible strike by education support workers, said several times that sick leave costs the province $35 million a day.
If one multiplies that number by 194 – the total number of days in the 2018-2019 school year – that would amount to $6.79 billion. It's a staggering figure, especially considering that according to CUPE, the total annual budget for the support workers is a little over $2 billion.
As it turns out, there are a couple of important things to know about this claim.
First, it includes the cost of sick days that teachers take. According to the Ministry of Education, sick leave by all workers in the public education sector costs the province about $600 million per year. That figure includes salary paid to sick workers, as well as the cost for substitute teachers and the administrative costs around finding replacement staff.
The ministry says that all those workers take an average of 17 sick days per year. When one divides the total annual cost of sick days ($600M) by the average number of sick days that teachers and support workers take (17), one gets a figure of approximately $35 million per average sick day. That's the figure that Lecce has been citing.
He mentioned the figure to reporters on Wednesday and again in a sit-down interview on CP24 Breakfast Thursday, saying "The issue is not the person, it is the fact that there are 130 sick days paid, 11 of which are at 100 per cent and 120 at 90 per cent. Now that costs the system $35 million a day when sick days are invoked."
Asked for a figure that includes just education support workers, the government said each average sick day for CUPE workers costs about $15 million. At an average of 15 sick days per year for CUPE workers, that means the total annual cost of CUPE workers' sick leave is around $225 million.
The key take-away for citizens who may be confused is that CUPE educational support workers' sick leave costs about $225 million annually according to the ministry, not $6.79 billion.
Nonetheless, that figure is one of the key issues on the negotiating table as the province, the school boards and the union bargain to reach a deal, ultimately in the hope of avoiding a strike that would see hundreds of thousands of kids shut out of classrooms.
