Discriminated woman wins €20k sick pay fight

A FIRM has been ordered to pay €20,000 compensation after it refused sick leave wages to an employee battling breast cancer.

Workplace Relations Commission Adjudication Officer Marie Flynn ruled the unnamed engineering company in Dublin discriminated against the Croatian woman.

Ms Flynn found she was discriminated against on the race ground after pointing out the firm paid an Irish comparator on the company’s workforce her full salary for the entirety of her period of ill health which occurred in the latter half of 2018.

The claimant was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2018 and she continued to work from home. Two months later, she told her boss her chemotherapy had caused a high blood sugar level which made her feel quite ill and she had to take sick leave.

The firm told the worker by email it would not pay her sick leave and she would have to apply for State benefits. The boss of the firm rejected refuted the complainant’s claim that she was discriminated against on the grounds of race.

He said the reason she had not been paid sick pay was purely financial.