3. Specific legal rights and protections

With benefits and sick pay under pressure and a harsher approach to sickness absence being taken by some employers, union reps will want to ensure that any legal protections or entitlements that could help employees affected by ill health or disability are applied.

The most significant area of law in this respect is the Equality Act 2010, which in particular offered new protections for disabled workers. It has also proved helpful for other sections of the workforce where sickness absence can arise in connection with pregnancy and maternity, gender, age, race, sexual orientation or gender reassignment.

Laws designed to protect workers whose status in the workplace may be more precarious than regular full-timers, such as part-time, fixed-term and agency workers, may also have a bearing on sickness absence policy. The exclusion of self-employed workers from sick pay (and other benefits) is also significant given the growth of false self-employment. There are laws on the arrangement of working time, specifically on flexible working and paid holiday entitlement that also interact with sick pay.