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Management's sick leave proposal is unfair

Posted 15 September 2009 by (NTEU National Office)

Colleagues will know of the intention of the university management to hold a ballot for a new agreement for general staff and English Language Centre teachers. The NTEU believes there are several reasons for opposing the approval of this agreement. One serious objection to be made is the way in which sick leave is to be managed. The NTEU wishes to emphasise the problems that many general staff and ELC teachers will face if this agreement and this clause are approved.

Before doing that we wish to correct an error we made in an email of 11 September.

In that email we claimed that if employees were to use more than 10 days' sick leave p.a. you would be required to produce a medical certificate for each and every additional day for which you take leave. This is not correct and we apologise for making this claim in error.

We do stand by our fundamental claim, however, that the sick leave clause makes a mockery of fair processes - for the following reasons:

o It allows for an outrageous level of intrusiveness into the doctor-patient   relationship

o The clause is extremely vague, and very poorly worded

o It allows the management to refuse or withdraw paid sick leave if you do not reciprocate contact within 24 hours

o The clause is far too open-ended, where all obligation falls on to the employee and very little on to the employer

o The clause opens the door to inequity by allowing for arbitrary treatment of individuals' claims for sick leave  

 Like the proposed agreement more generally, the sick leave clause is not in your interests. There is no point in having uncapped paid leave if you are prevented from taking it. We can do better than this. We should not allow ourselves to be steam rolled into accepting poor conditions. Let's hold out for better.