Sick pay question.

Cyril

I work for a big multi national company which is franchised out and work part time.

Last week I was off sick for 2 shifts due to flu and I have been told i'm not entitled to sick pay. Is this correct as I have been employed for 4 years.

katz03

yes, unless you have contractual sick pay.

For statutory b sick pay, the first three days off are called 'waiting days' and SSP is not due (unless it links in to a previous period of sickness)

paddedjohn

To add to the above, even if you are off for more than 3 days you also have to earn an average of £102 per week to qualify for ssp.

WestonDave

It is very common for employees taken on within the last few years (probably more than 4) to have the first 3 days of any sickness excluded from sick pay. The thinking is to discourage "monday morning sickies" where people don't fancy work so phone in sick for one day. Most real illnesses last more than the odd few days - even with the typical "24 hour stomach bug" the medical advice is to stay away from other people for 48 hours after the last symptoms so you should be off for 3 days with that!

Cyril

Oh ok.

First time i've ever had time off tbh so didn't know.

Evilm

WestonDave wrote: »

It is very common for employees taken on within the last few years (probably more than 4) to have the first 3 days of any sickness excluded from sick pay. The thinking is to discourage "monday morning sickies" where people don't fancy work so phone in sick for one day. Most real illnesses last more than the odd few days - even with the typical "24 hour stomach bug" the medical advice is to stay away from other people for 48 hours after the last symptoms so you should be off for 3 days with that!

Statutory sick pay has always excluded the first 3 days. Considering the description of the company i'd be surprised if there is company paid sick pay for the employees.

Firetastic

If you fall unwell and make a claim for SSP then recover only to become unwell again those two periods can be linked as long as it is within eight weeks of the previous claim. You don't have to wait for the three days to restart your claim.

chrisbur

Firetastic wrote: »

If you fall unwell and make a claim for SSP then recover only to become unwell again those two periods can be linked as long as it is within eight weeks of the previous claim. You don't have to wait for the three days to restart your claim.

Not all sickness absences that fall within eight weeks of each other will link. In order to link both periods of sickness must be at least four days in length, and for those four days you must have done no work at all. However these four days do not have to have been working days, so if you worked say Monday to Friday (and these were considered your qualifying days for SSP) and was sick and did no work Saturday to Tuesday then Monday and Tuesday would count as two waiting days. If this then happened again within eight weeks then the Monday would be your third waiting day and Tuesday you would get one day SSP in this case 1/5 of the weekly rate. If however the second sickness was from Tuesday to Thursday this would not count as only sick for three days so no linking would occur this time, as far as SSP is concerned this sickness would not be recorded at all.