We’ve talked about sick pay before in this column, unsurprisingly, given that a pandemic means lots of ill workers. But while we’ve needed those with Covid to stay at home, it’s been hard, thanks to the lowest statutory sick pay in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which protects only a quarter of our earnings on average.
It’s worth asking why overall sick pay levels are so bad. Firms and workers have the option of negotiating employer-provided sick pay beyond the legal minimum. Many do, but two-fifths of workers in caring, leisure and service jobs rely on the statutory minimum.
New research helps us understand why we have a problem. Surveying more than 12,000 UK residents, it found that workers who come into more
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