The Victorian government has launched a two year trial ‘Victorian Sick Pay Guarantee’ Scheme that will pay sick leave for casual workers. Controversially, the Scheme does not replace the 25% loading provided to casual employees in lieu of receiving paid entitlements.

Initially funded by taxpayers (first phase costed at $245.6 million), current dialogue speculates that the funding arrangements for the Victorian Sick Pay Guarantee Scheme may rely on an industry levy applied to Victorian businesses but to date, nothing has been confirmed. Currently the scheme is administered via Services Victoria.

The Scheme will provide five days (equivalent to 38 hours) of paid personal (sick and carers) per year leave for eligible casual workers at the national minimum wage, self-employed sole-traders or freelancers without employees who run a business inside Victoria in industries identified to have large cohorts of casual workers.

Eligible jobs in the first phase of the Scheme include:

-      hospitality workers

-      food trades workers and food preparation assistants

-      supermarket workers

-      retail and sales assistants

-      aged and disability care workers

-      cleaners and laundry workers

-      security guards

This leave is not accumulative which means unused leave will not roll over to the following year. Further to this, workers must supply a medical certificate if the leave is for more than 15 hours in a row.

The scheme went live on March 14 on the Services Victoria website.  Premier Daniel Andrews stated “The absolute common sense of this, and frankly, the equity and justice of this will be absolutely obvious to everybody’.

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the United Workers Union has welcomed the news, saying it would go a long way to bolster financial security and prevent workplace transmission of diseases such as COVID-19.

Premier Andrews is hoping to see at the end of the two years a national government agreeing that this is a national issue.

However, Federal Industrial Relations Minister Michaelia Cash said Mr Andrews needed to ‘explain to Victorian small and medium businesses what will happen after the initial two-year period expires and how much he will tax them to cover this scheme’.

We will keep you informed and updated on this initiative.