UK Employment Law: What Happens If You Are Sick When On Annual Leave?
Sick on leave? Within a combined motion introduced by numerous Spanish trade labour unions, the European Court of Justice has held that any worker who's ill throughout yearly leave is eligible to treat the period as sick leave and get their annual leave later on.
This of course has caused concern with some employers.
The ECJ codified prior European case law in this region and reiterated that the objective of annual leave as per the Working Time Directive would be to permit all employees a time of relaxation.
Right to compensated sick leave features a completely different function plus the two cannot hence be considered interchangeable in this scenario.
We will have to observe how this conclusion is construed through the British legal courts but due to the obvious judgment it appears most likely that they'll consider any techniques resistant to the above to be illegal within the Working Time Directive.
Although it might be challenging to dispute this in situations where a worker results in being disabled for work by some severe illness, in reality this might demonstrate an administrative headache for companies in which workers take sick leave for small health issues like a cold or even the flu.
At the moment most companies will need a sick note from a physician for a time period of sick leave spanning a particular length of time, but let's say an employee states, for example, that in a 2 week vacation in Marbella they ended up being sick in bed and not capable of work for days to weeks? They ought to in principle have the ability to recuperate two days of annual leave to use at a later date.
This might be extremely hard for the company to confirm aside from clamping down of medical evidence for all those periods of sick leave.
It appears improbable, nevertheless this possibility of misuse would impact most employer-employee connections where in actuality little time periods of sick leave for day-to-day sickness are obtained based on trust.
The government could very well seek out to reply to this judgment in its continuing response to the Modern Workplace consultation.
We wait with anticipation to discover what occurs in the coming months and years.
So much is changing in the United Kingdom workplace, and regarding the laws surrounding employee and employer relations.
Certainly the shifting economic times we live in are forcing businesses and governments to reevaluate present legislation.
This of course has caused concern with some employers.
The ECJ codified prior European case law in this region and reiterated that the objective of annual leave as per the Working Time Directive would be to permit all employees a time of relaxation.
Right to compensated sick leave features a completely different function plus the two cannot hence be considered interchangeable in this scenario.
We will have to observe how this conclusion is construed through the British legal courts but due to the obvious judgment it appears most likely that they'll consider any techniques resistant to the above to be illegal within the Working Time Directive.
Although it might be challenging to dispute this in situations where a worker results in being disabled for work by some severe illness, in reality this might demonstrate an administrative headache for companies in which workers take sick leave for small health issues like a cold or even the flu.
At the moment most companies will need a sick note from a physician for a time period of sick leave spanning a particular length of time, but let's say an employee states, for example, that in a 2 week vacation in Marbella they ended up being sick in bed and not capable of work for days to weeks? They ought to in principle have the ability to recuperate two days of annual leave to use at a later date.
This might be extremely hard for the company to confirm aside from clamping down of medical evidence for all those periods of sick leave.
It appears improbable, nevertheless this possibility of misuse would impact most employer-employee connections where in actuality little time periods of sick leave for day-to-day sickness are obtained based on trust.
The government could very well seek out to reply to this judgment in its continuing response to the Modern Workplace consultation.
We wait with anticipation to discover what occurs in the coming months and years.
So much is changing in the United Kingdom workplace, and regarding the laws surrounding employee and employer relations.
Certainly the shifting economic times we live in are forcing businesses and governments to reevaluate present legislation.
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