Stage 1

[danny8hoy]

I was put over the sickness allowance due to helping out the manager. I was unwell phoned in on the thursday and he asked me to go in on the Friday to do indoor work, which i did. Still didnt feel right, so took Saturday off. This is being treated as 2 seperate incidents which took me onto the 4 instances in a year, which affected my planned sabbatical. Should these of been linked?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I was put over the sickness allowance due to helping out the manager. I was unwell phoned in on the thursday and he asked me to go in on the Friday to do indoor work, which i did. Still didnt feel right, so took Saturday off. This is being treated as 2 seperate incidents which took me onto the 4 instances in a year, which affected my planned sabbatical. Should these of been linked?

You can't appeal it unfortunately, but if feel aggrieved enough then there is always the Grievance procedure.

Technically he has followed the letter, but not the spirit of the agreement, in that you had 4 absences. But he has used it as a punishment and hasn't taken into account that 2 absences were caused by the same condition. A good rep would have tried to make sure the stage wasn't issued.

As I say you can't appeal, but if you do go to a stage 3 then you'll have a good argument to have this stage looked at again, and that will help in a stage 3.

Hopefully, you took in a rep, if not then there are 2 lessons learned.

1. Join the Union and/or take a rep in with you on a Stage meeting.
2. Don't do managers any favours, ever.

Also never return to work if you don't feel up to it, no matter what pressure managers put on you, ultimately you can self-certificate for 6 days and there isn't much they can do.