A rather complicated question on maternity leave/sick leave

[lucky1979]

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience of my rather complicated problem round maternity leave and could offer any advice?

I'm an account manager for a small company and have been on maternity leave since September. I've had ongoing problems with my hips from developmental dysplasia, which has culminated in me needing to have both hips replaced, for which I am currently on the waiting list. The waiting list is currently about 5 months, and they anticipate the first operation being mid-August. The recovery time for each hip is 6 weeks with no expectation of work, then 6 more weeks where I could do some light work from home (not really feasible with my work where there is a lot of out and about seeing clients). Once those 12 weeks are up, I'll be back in to have the other hip done, with the same projected recovery time.

So my paid maternity leave runs out in June (I get SMP only), then I have my 3 unpaid months. I'm just not sure where I stand in terms of sick pay? Should my sick pay start from when I'm in for the operation, or is it just tough luck as far as maternity leave goes and sick pay will kick in from the day my unpaid maternity leave finishes? I'm also concerned that work will be able to make me redundant/fire me, as I will have been off work for a year and a half once the operations are over with, and I appreciate that that isn't ideal!

Pretty rotten timing all in all, but I can't put these operations off any longer and the waiting list is what it is so they can't be done any earlier. Any ideas?

Poor you!

You can't have sick pay and be on maternity leave, so you have two choices. You can either pick a return date for maternity leave and be paid sick pay during the time you are unfit to work (although bear in mind that, once fit for work, you have to return, you can't stop and restart maternity leave), or you could stay on maternity leave, be paid according to SMP rules and then only start sick leave if/when you are unfit to return to work at the end of your maternity leave.

The first may get you more money, but the second should result in shorter sickness absence. If the sick pay period is short, you may prefer this.

You shouldn't be penalised for absences related to pregnancy, no matter what the normal policy on levels of sickness absence. I'm not sure if your illness is linked to your pregnancy. Even if not, they should not lump together maternity leave and sickness (i.e they should just look at the sickness) and most employers are sympathetic about a single long bout of illness - it's lots of short things that cause problems.

Brilliant, thank you for your response Illness is not linked to pregnancy - the hip replacements were on the cards before conceiving, just DD put a pause on proceedings

Good to know they can't penalise me, as its a small company with no HR facility the directors have a tendancy to try and pull a fast one, I have lots of petty (and not so petty) examples of where they have tried to save the company money at the expense of employee rights, so just wanted to make sure I knew what my rights were before getting into discussion with them.

Do you know what happens to my holiday allowance if I don't work all year, do I lose it or do they have to pay me equivilant for it?