Sick leave is a right

The General Workers' Union's recent request for a ruling from the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations regarding sick leave raised eyebrows at the employers' association. Otherwise, the association's director general, Joseph Farrugia, wouldn't have felt concerned enough to pen his reaction on the matter.

Without hesitation, the GWU opposes any form of abuse, even of the kind attached to sick leave entitlement. However, and unfortunately, the general perception among various employers is that it is only the employees who are abusing their sick leave entitlement.

Perhaps little do they know of instances where certain company doctors, instead of calling at the sick employees' homes, simply leave a note in the letterbox without even trying to visit the patient. The absurdity of it is that they then report to the company that the employee in question was not found at home. Then there are cases where employees who were not certified as sick by company doctors reported for work and hours later were rushed to hospital for medical treatment after fainting.

These cases are real, even if infrequent. And it is the employee who in the end suffers the consequences. It is also shameful to know of instances of company doctors acting like "watch dogs" rather than as health carers and occupational health specialists.

The GWU is claiming that once an employee is genuinely sick and certified as unfit for work, then s/he should be entitled to sick leave. It is worth noting that during a recent meeting between the GWU and a Medical Association of Malta (MAM) official, it was confirmed that, once a doctor is asked to visit an employee, he is meant to certify him or her as fit or not fit for work. MAM claims that they do not go into sick leave payments. And it is precisely here where the trouble starts, since it is unwise that management be given the prerogative to decide unilaterally or subjectively who is sick and who is not, and who should be paid and who should not.

Surely the GWU is never going to agree to management having the full power to pay or not to pay for sick leave. Is it fair that an employee who is involved in sport over the weekend and gets injured is denied sick leave and is obliged to take vacation leave instead?

On one hand the employers claim that sick leave is a right and must be honoured and also insist that their employees must stay healthy and fit. On the other hand they penalise employees who take their advice and involve themselves in some kind of sport. This is a contradiction.

Employees know what their annual sick-leave entitlement is and as long as they are certified as unfit for work, the management should not refuse to treat these cases as such. Within the social parameters, sick leave should not be considered as a cost because the day it is treated as an expenditure its value will be diluted. At present no law stipulates the criteria justifying sick leave or otherwise, and so a common understanding ought to be found between the two parties.

Since the GWU realises that in this scenario there are unregulated areas, it is proposing a bi-partite round table conference on the subject chaired by the Director of Employment and Industrial Relations, a professional in the field, at which the union and the employers would discuss the issue in detail with the aim of finding common ground and understanding on which they could move forward.

There is no doubt that both bodies agree that sick leave is a right and that it must not be abused and, when abuses are found out, they should be tackled accordingly. The GWU is confident that the proper guidelines can be established in the interests of both employers and employees.

Ms Gatt is GWU corporate executive.