Land Transport New Zealand was unjustified in warning an employee about taking too much sick leave, the Employment Relations Authority has ruled.
It has ordered LTNZ to pay Tania Bentley, a senior customer representative at its transport registry centre in Palmerston North, $3000 in compensation for unfairly puttinga warning on her employment record.
The ERA said there was no doubt Ms Bentley took a lot of sick leave. From 2001 to 2007, the number of days she had off sick ranged from 14 annually to 30.
In addition to two children of her own, she fostered a number of children - sometimes as many as three. They were often sick, while her husband had had serious health issues in recent years.
Brett Dooley, the manager of Ms Bentley's department, had found absenteeism his greatest staff issue, the ERA said, with 20 per cent of the 250 staff under active monitoring because of their number of sick days.
Given the large financial cost on LTNZ and the difficulty of replacing staff at short notice, Mr Dooley saw reducing absenteeism, including sick leave, as a key issue.
He reviewed Ms Bentley's sick leave and wrote to her saying he proposed issuing her with a verbal warning as her continuing absence was just not sustainable for the business.
Through a representative, Ms Bentley responded that any warning would be an unjustified disadvantage to her employment. She said a warning could not be justified simply because it was inconvenient to LTNZ.
A warning to last for 12 months on her record was then issued.
The dispute could not be resolved and the ERA was called upon. It accepted that Mr Dooley did not doubt that Ms Bentley had genuine reasons for taking the sick leave. But it found his action was unjustified.
"While an employer can 'fairly cry halt' to a worker's employment if excessive sick leave is taken, I conclude that no fair and reasonable employer would have concluded that that position was anywhere near being reached in Ms Bentley's case," authority member Greg Wood said. The cases in which excessive sick leave had justified dismissal had involved significantly more leave than was involved in Ms Bentley's case, he said.
