Is this legal in employment?

[Isthebusstillrunning]

An hourly paid job that has a 'bonus rate' attached to the hourly rate. Paid monthly, each month you'll be paid the bonus rate as long as you aren't off sick. If you're sick or absent, you'll lose the bonus rate.
Aibu to think this is not legal? It's punishing people for being sick.
Ofc there are always people who take the piss and skive sometimes but we're human, sometimes we are unwell and it cannot be helped.
I find it outrageous and have never heard this before.

I mean if you have just one day off you will lose the entire bonus rate for the month.

My mum had precisely this when she worked as a cleaner at the hospital. She’s been retired 20 years though so not sure about the position now but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was legal.

It's legal.
Maybe think of it more as a bonus for people who have had to work a bit harder to cover absences.

Why wouldn't it be legal? As long as the regular rate is above minimum wage, an employer can choose to financially reward any behaviour they like unless said behaviour is itself illegal or the incentive discriminates against a protected class. They can choose to pay people with long hair bonuses if they want to.

You may not like it or think it's a good idea. But that's a long way from "illegal".

Yes, it is, it's an attendance bonus but it has to be inplemented fairly and carefully to avoid discrimination claims.

Sometimes sickness can't be helped. I just think it's wrong to penalise people for it.

Yep absolutely fine, and very common.

Legal, and not unlike school absence incentives etc.

It's not the sort of job where others will have to work harder as a result.

Aibu to think this is not legal? It's punishing people for being sick.

No, it's incentvising those who are not. I can see some problems with such a scheme but it's not punishing people for being ill.

So let's say you've been in every single day, then one day you get a sickness bug. You have a day or two off. So you've lost over £100 that month as a result. I'm not sure why so many people are in agreement with that. Should you go into work and infect others?

it does mean that people are more likely to come in when sick. and as my mum worked in the NICU not really ideal for babies or parents.

Or you're diagnosed with cancer. Hit by a car. So many things out of your control. It's not just people ringing in with a cold or something.

The work is looking after sick people as a matter of fact. So suggesting people need to come in and potentially infect vulnerable people because they will lose over £100 that month if they don't.

You haven’t lost it as the bonus part isn’t standard.

You asked whether it was legal. Not whether it was top-notch aspirational business practice, or even ethical.

The companies that do it have clearly decided that the benefits to them outweigh the costs. Are they right? I have no idea.

Life isn’t fair and I have some sympathy. However average healthy adults are rarely ill. You shouldn’t lose a bonus very often.

Well it is if you've been in every other single day with the intention to achieve this bonus. Then because of something out of your control you lose it.
I imagine a lot of these posters saying it's right do not have this in their own jobs.

No maybe not, but unfortunately that’s the system

They wont lose it, though. They'll just gain it if they do choose to go in.

What's the pay like as standard? Crap?

You haven't lost anything as its a bonus. Most people are only ill enough to call i sick a few times a year max, so out of 12 months everyone ahould be able to get 8 or 9 months of the payments

Lose one day's bonus, fair enough. Lose the entire month's bonus is too far. Fair enough it is legal, I certainly don't see it as ethical though.
Imagine that suddenly a family member passes away and you need a day off? Should you lose the entire month's then?

To be fair it would encourage me to take longer off if I was genuinely ill on the first day because I'd not get the bonus anyway.

In the 90s I worked in HR for a global firm which introduced “HAP” Holiday Attendance Payment. If you had no more than 5 sick days in a year, you were given 2 days pay as a “bonus” to spend on holiday. (or wherever you wanted, that was just the name)

The employees were all for it, though the union reps complained it was penalising sick people. The employees told the reps to STFU when the management said, “OK, too controversial - we’ll ditch it.” It was certainly legal then, though I appreciate that’s years ago!

I was very junior in HR at the time and mostly compiling and interpreting data. So I was the one doing all the graphs to show that sickness peaked the month before the end of the “sickness absence procedure” year re-set. And no, it’s not because the end of the year was flu season - the year varied between departments. Half the managers came from the shop floor and everyone had been part of the, “I’ve got 4 more sick days to use” conversations.

Rewarding attendance in the workplace isn’t penalising people who are sick. They’re still getting their contracted basic plus (rightly) getting sick pay and keeping their jobs. They’re not losing anything they signed up for.

In 40 years working so far, I’ve come across far more take the piss sick time than genuine.

What happens if you're on annual leave?