SUPPORTING STATEMENT: One out of five people working in the United States have no access to earned sick time, or “paid sick leave”, for short-term illness, health needs and preventive care.1 They often face an impossible choice when they are sick: stay at home and risk their economic security or go to work and risk their coworkers’ and the public’s health. CN has significantly lagged all but one other Class I railroad in the amount of paid sick leave agreements it has negotiated with unions representing its U.S. workforce since the last round of national bargaining concluded.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, paid sick leave is a crucial component of public health by allowing sick workers who are contagious to isolate themselves from their coworkers and the public. One study found a 56% reduction in COVID-19 cases as the result of temporary federally mandated COVID-19 paid sick leave in states that did not previously have paid sick leave.2 State and local paid sick leave laws have also been shown to reduce influenza-like illness infections without causing negative effects on employment or wages.3
Under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, railroad employees are only entitled to sickness benefits after seven days of illness.4 Railroad employees and their unions have expressed concern that these benefits are inadequate, and that employees risk discipline if they need to take unscheduled time off due to sickness.5 Workers’ concerns about the need for paid sick leave have been exacerbated by the railroad industry’s adoption of “precision scheduled railroading” that has reduced railroad carrier staffing levels by 30 percent since 2015.6 In 2022, members of various railway unions rejected tentative agreements that did not contain employer provided paid sick leave benefits.7 According to the Association of American Railroads, a nationwide rail shutdown due to a labor dispute could cost the U.S. economy more than $2 billion a day.8
As a result of legislation passed in Canada in 2022, all of Canada’s federally regulated employees, including CN’s Canadian employees, get up to 10 days of paid sick leave a year. The implementation of this requirement in Canada has created a disparity where CN’s Canadian workforce has immediate paid sick leave, but its U.S. based workforce is only entitled to sickness benefits after seven days of illness. That disparity does not make sense from a financial or operational perspective.
We believe negotiating comprehensive and permanent paid sick leave policies with all unions representing CN’s U.S. workforce would help make the future operating environment more equitable and mitigate reputational, financial, and regulatory risk to Canadian National Railway.
1 https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2021/employee-benefits-in-the-united-states-march-2021.pdf 
2 https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00863 
3 https://voxeu.org/article/pros-and-cons-sick-pay 
4 https://rrb.gov/Benefits/UB9
5 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/business/railroad-workers-strike-threat.html
6 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/business/economy/railroad-workers-strike.html 
7 https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1136459343/railroads-rail-workers-strike-negotiations-labor-union 
8 https://www.aar.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AAR-Rail-Shutdown-Report-September-2022.pdf