Labour Court Rejects Employer’s Statutory Sick Pay Appeal

In this Case, the Employer appealed a decision of an Adjudication Officer in relation to a complaint by the Complainant that they had acted contrary to the Sick Leave Act 2022. Under the Employer’s sick leave scheme, the Complainant did not have the requisite service and therefore was not paid for the absence.

The Respondent submitted that its sick pay scheme as a whole was more favourable and therefore the statutory scheme did not apply.

Having applied the criteria set out in Section 9 of the 2022 Act to the Employer’s scheme, the Labour Court upheld the decision of the Workplace Relations Commission finding that the Respondent’s sick pay scheme was not more favourable as a whole than the statutory sick pay scheme.

While it is open to Organisations to assert that a more favourable company sick pay scheme exempts them from the requirement to provide statutory sick pay, this decision underlines the need to carefully examine existing policies to determine whether they are genuinely more favourable than the statutory entitlement.

This Labour Court ruling is also useful as it provides clear guidance as to how Organisations can compare the overall favourability of a company scheme against the non-applicability criteria under Section 9(2) of the Sick Leave Act 2022.

To learn more about partnering with Adare Trusted People Partners’ Leading HR & Employment Law Experts, please contact Neil McCormack nmccormack@adarehrm.ie today.