AbsentEase
Yukon sick leave law & call-off rules
Yukon's sick leave is an accrual rather than a grant: employees bank one unpaid day for every month employed, up to twelve, and may not be dismissed or laid off for an absence inside that bank. Employers may ask for a practitioner's certificate for any sick claim, both sides owe notice of termination after six months, and final pay is due within a week. Here is what applies in 2026.
Yukon at a glance
| Statute | Employment Standards Act (RSY 2002, c. 72) · enforced by the Employment Standards Office, Yukon Department of Community Services (867-667-5944) |
|---|---|
| Statutory sick leave | 1 unpaid day per month employed, banked to a maximum of 12; no dismissal or layoff for an absence inside the bank |
| Doctor's note | May be requested for any sick-leave claim |
| Notice of termination | 1 to 8 weeks by length of service after 6 months (not for unionized employees) |
| Final pay | Within 7 days of termination, vacation pay included |
| Vacation pay | 4%, always paid out within 7 days |
| Employee notice to quit | 1 to 4 weeks by length of service after 6 months |
| Violence leave | 5 paid + 5 unpaid days and up to 15 unpaid weeks a year (since July 2021) |
Is paid sick leave required in Yukon?
No paid days; one unpaid day a month, banked. No employer may dismiss or lay off an employee solely because of an absence due to illness or injury that is within the employee's entitlement (s. 59(1)), and the entitlement is one day of unpaid leave for each month of employment, less days already taken, to a running maximum of twelve days (s. 59(2)). The employer may request a certificate from a qualified medical practitioner or nurse practitioner as a condition of the entitlement (s. 59(3)). A contract or policy that gives more prevails (s. 3). Yukon has no separate family responsibility or long-term illness leave; absences beyond the bank fall under the human-rights duty to accommodate.
How sick leave works in Yukon
| Accrual | 1 unpaid day per month of employment, net of days taken, to a maximum of 12 banked days (s. 59(2)) |
|---|---|
| Protection | No dismissal or layoff solely for an absence within the bank (s. 59(1)) |
| Doctor's notes | A certificate from a qualified medical practitioner or nurse practitioner may be requested for any sick-leave claim (s. 59(3)); apply the request consistently |
| Carry-over | Built into the accrual: unused days stay in the bank until it reaches 12 |
| Partial days | The Act is silent; set the rule in your policy |
| Longer illness | No statutory long-term leave; the human-rights duty to accommodate a disability governs |
| Pay | Unpaid, unless your contract, policy or collective agreement says otherwise |
The rules that apply across Canada
The duty to accommodate
Every province's human rights code, and the Canadian Human Rights Act for federally regulated employers, requires accommodating a disability to the point of undue hardship, and "disability" includes mental illness and addiction. Absences tied to a disability cannot simply collect points: tribunals expect the employer to ask what is going on, consider modified duties or a leave, and document the effort. Long or repeated absences an employee cannot control are "innocent" (non-culpable) absenteeism, which is not misconduct and cannot be disciplined; employment can end for it only when the record shows the employee is unlikely to attend regularly in the foreseeable future and accommodation has been exhausted.
Employment Insurance
Service Canada, not the employer, decides whether a former employee gets regular EI benefits. Someone who quit without just cause or was dismissed for misconduct is disqualified, so the reason code on the Record of Employment and the call-off record behind it matter: a no-call no-show treated as abandonment is usually coded as a quit, and a dismissal for breaking a known attendance rule is argued as misconduct. Either way the employer's evidence is the written policy and the time-stamped record of what the employee did and did not report.
Unionized workplaces
Where a collective agreement applies, attendance discipline follows its just-cause and progressive-discipline clauses and any grievance goes to arbitration. Arbitrators expect the same things the statutes do: a written rule the employee knew about, consistent enforcement, and a contemporaneous record of each absence.
Banks, airlines, rail, interprovincial trucking, telecoms and a few other industries are federally regulated and follow the Canada Labour Code instead of Yukon's statute.
Call-offs, no-call no-shows, and dismissal in Yukon
Yukon's rule is arithmetic: count the employee's banked sick days before you count anything else. An absence inside the bank cannot be the reason for a dismissal or layoff (s. 59(1)), though you may ask for a practitioner's certificate to confirm it (s. 59(3)), and the request has to be applied the same way to everyone. Outside the bank, and outside the violence and compassionate leaves, a no-call no-show is culpable conduct that progressive discipline can address; the Act does not define just cause, so the common-law standard, a known rule, warnings, proportionate steps and a clean record, decides whether the final dismissal owes notice. Because the employee also owes you notice after six months, a walk-out is a breach, but the Act's only remedy is a consented one-week deduction or a deposit with the Director. A call-off hotline or text-based call-off line keeps the time-stamped record the Employment Standards Board will ask for.
After a no call, no show termination in Yukon
| Does the statute define job abandonment? | No. The statute does not define job abandonment or a consecutive-days threshold. At common law abandonment is a resignation, and the test is objective: would a reasonable person, looking at what the employee said and did, conclude they clearly and unequivocally intended to give up the job? An employer that assumed a quit after silence, without first telling the employee that silence would be treated as a resignation, has lost on that point (Hettrick v. Triple F Paving, 2021 ONSC 208). (common law; Betts v. IBM Canada, 2015 ONSC 5298) |
|---|---|
| Final pay if you treat it as a dismissal | All wages, including termination pay, are due within 7 days of the termination. (Employment Standards Act s. 65(2)) |
| Final pay if you treat it as a resignation | Same 7-day deadline. After six months the employee owed you one to four weeks' notice; one week's wages may be deducted only with their consent, otherwise the amount goes to the Director (s. 52). (ss. 50(2), 52, 65(2)) |
| Vacation pay at separation | Always owed: 4% of wages, paid within 7 days of termination. (ss. 19, 25(1)) |
| Employment Insurance | Service Canada decides. A claimant who voluntarily left without just cause, or who lost the job because of their own misconduct, is disqualified from regular benefits; a no-call no-show treated as abandonment is usually coded as a quit (Record of Employment code E) and a dismissal for breaking a known attendance rule as a dismissal (code M). Either way Service Canada may ask for the written policy and the call-off record. (Employment Insurance Act, ss. 29–30) |
Before treating silence as a resignation, try to reach the employee more than once, in writing, and keep the attempts: an employer who assumes abandonment after one missed shift usually ends up having dismissed someone, with the notice and severance that follow.
Write an attendance policy that fits Yukon
A written call-off rule, a single channel employees use to report an absence, and a carve-out for the statutory leaves above are what make attendance discipline hold up in Yukon. Our attendance policy guide walks through each section, and what a call-off hotline is explains the record it produces.
Minimum notice of termination in Yukon
| Length of service | Minimum notice (or pay in lieu) |
|---|---|
| Under 6 months | None |
| 6 months to under 1 year | 1 week |
| 1 to under 3 years | 2 weeks |
| 3 to under 4 years | 3 weeks |
| 4 to under 5 years | 4 weeks |
| 5 to under 6 years | 5 weeks |
| 6 to under 7 years | 6 weeks |
| 7 to under 8 years | 7 weeks |
| 8 years or more | 8 weeks |
Employment Standards Act s. 50(1), with termination pay in lieu under s. 51. The notice part does not apply to an employee discharged for just cause (s. 49(1)(c), undefined, so the common-law standard applies), to construction or seasonal work under six months, or to unionized employees (s. 49(3)). Twenty-five or more terminations within four weeks need 4 to 16 weeks' notice to the Director on top of individual notice (s. 58). The common law usually requires more notice than the statute; the Act is the floor.
Final pay and vacation pay
| Scenario | Rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employee is dismissed | All wages, including termination pay, within 7 days of the termination (termination pay may be paid in instalments) | Employment Standards Act s. 65(2) and (3) |
| Employee quits or abandons the job | Same 7-day deadline. After 6 months the employee owed 1 to 4 weeks' notice (s. 50(2)); you may deduct one week's wages for missing notice only with the employee's consent, otherwise pay it to the Director to decide | ss. 50(2), 52, 65(2) |
| Vacation pay | 4% of wages, paid within 7 days of termination | ss. 19, 25(1) |
| Unused banked sick days | Not paid out: the bank is unpaid leave | s. 59 |
A contract or policy that gives more than the Act prevails (s. 3).
Leave employers must provide in Yukon
| Leave type | Required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sick leave | Yes — unpaid | 1 day per month, banked to 12 (s. 59) |
| Bereavement | Yes — unpaid | Up to 1 week where the funeral falls in it (s. 60) |
| Domestic and sexualized violence | Yes — partly paid | 5 paid + 5 unpaid days and up to 15 unpaid weeks a year; the paid days and the long leave after 90 days (in force July 8, 2021) |
| Compassionate care | Yes — unpaid | 28 weeks (s. 60.01) |
| Critically ill child or adult | Yes — unpaid | 37 weeks (child, after 6 months) or 17 weeks (adult) (ss. 60.02, 60.02.01) |
| Reservist | Yes — unpaid | After 6 months (s. 60.05) |
| Jury or witness duty | Not in the Act | No court-leave provision; follow the Jury Act and treat it as excused |
| Vacation | Yes | 2 weeks, pay 4% |
The crime-related death or disappearance of a child leave (s. 60.03) also exists. Voting time comes from the Elections Act rather than the Employment Standards Act.
The Yukon employer's attendance playbook
- Put it in writing. A written policy — the call-off deadline and channel, the steps of progressive discipline, the no-call no-show rule, and a carve-out for the statutory leaves and accommodated absences above — is what makes discipline defensible. Our attendance policy guide walks through it.
- Give call-offs one channel. "Tell whoever answers" is how records get lost. One number every employee texts or calls makes the record automatic.
- Log everything with timestamps. Employment-standards complaints, human rights applications and arbitrations are won on contemporaneous records, not recollections.
- Discipline progressively and consistently. Canadian adjudicators expect warnings before dismissal for attendance, and uneven enforcement turns a lawful dismissal into a reprisal or discrimination claim.
- Screen call-offs for protected reasons before applying any step — a statutory sick or family day, or an absence tied to a disability, gets a different track than an overslept alarm.
Comparing jurisdictions? See every published guide on the Canadian sick leave laws hub, or the US state guides.