KEY POINTS:
Teachers who suffer mental illness because of working conditions are entitled to paid sick leave, the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has ruled.
In a decision released yesterday, the authority found that a Christchurch primary school teacher and former deputy principal was entitled to "disregarded sick leave" under provisions in the collective agreement to which she was a party.
Under the agreement, teachers were entitled to accumulated sick leave. The balance of a teacher's sick leave at any point was the leave they had accumulated, minus paid sick leave that had been correctly debited.
Paid sick leave was not to be debited from a teacher's balance if sickness could be "traced directly to the conditions or circumstances under which the employee is working" and was to be known as "disregarded sick leave".
The teacher, referred to only as Ms A in the ERA determination, took various periods of sick leave during 2004, which the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) claimed was "directly traceable to the conditions and circumstances under which she had been working, specifically a severely dysfunctional working environment and the inadequacy of the employer's attempts to address matters".
Ms A's sick leave was debited by the Secretary for Education until her balance was exhausted. She remained on sick leave but received no further wages. Eventually Ms A resigned from her position as deputy principal at Linwood Intermediate School without returning to work.
She took further sick leave during 2005 while teaching at Woolston School.
While Ms A received pay for the first five days of sick leave in 2005, the secretary caused pay for subsequent days to be debited from her fortnightly salary payments on the basis that her sick leave entitlement was exhausted.
The NZEI contended that Ms A should have been granted "disregarded sick leave" under the collective agreement clause and should not have had any leave debited from her available balance.
In submissions to the ERA, the NZEI said it understood the Secretary for Education contended that disregarded sick leave did not apply in Ms A's case because the provision was limited to physical illness and/or excluded any matter in which the sick teacher might also have grounds for a personal grievance against an employer.
The Secretary for Education argued that the collective agreement clause referred plainly to "matters of physical disability" and did not extend to psychological or psychiatric illness.
ERA member Denis Asher said in his ruling that the provisions in the collective agreement did not support the secretary's approach. "Ms A was sick.
"There are no limitations to particular types of sickness. Her illness was causally connected to the working environment," he said.
- NZPA
