An appeal by pharmaceutical firm SK Biotek against an award at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) of compensation to an employee excluded from the company’s sick pay scheme has been successful at the Labour Court.
Shannon Reina, who worked for the company as a quality control analyst between August 2023 and July 2024 had made a complaint against her former employer in which she argued she should have paid statutory sick pay for an absence between May 13th and 17th, 2024, as she had been excluded from the terms of the company policy.
The Act provides that where a company policy offers generally superior benefits to employees over a set reference period, it takes precedence over the statutory regulations, even in particular instances where the employee is treated less favourably.
Reina, however, argued that her exclusion from the company scheme in early 2024 – as a result of her having been involved in a disciplinary procedure due to the number of absences she recorded in late 2023 – meant she could only rely on her statutory entitlements with any comparison of benefits rendered irrelevant.
At the WRC, the adjudication officer (AO) agreed and awarded Reina €500 in compensation.
At the Labour Court appeal, Desmond Ryan BL for the company submitted that the Act did not apply to it in circumstances where an employer provided a sick pay scheme, the terms of which provides to its employees, “benefits that are, as a whole, more favourable to the employee than statutory sick leave”.
He said a comparison between the two gave a clear outcome and that it was not relevant that conditions were attached to the payment of benefits under the company scheme.
In its decision, the court, chaired by Alan Haugh, said the complainant had told the court she agreed the respondent’s sick leave scheme “confers more favourable benefits than the statutory sick leave scheme”.
“She has not disputed that she did not meet the eligibility criteria of the respondent’s scheme in May 2024 due to the extent of her illness-related absences from the workplace. Her claim is that, in circumstances where she became disentitled to benefit from her employer’s scheme, the respondent was obliged to apply the terms of the statutory scheme to her.”
But the wording of section 9 (1) of the Act was “clear and unambiguous” and her claim was not “consistent with the proper interpretation of section 9(1)”.
It found section 9, “absolutely exempts the respondent from the obligation to apply the statutory sick leave scheme” and set aside the decision of the AO at the WRC.