labours sick

[ians]

In this country it seems you need to factor in another expense, sick people.

When you are a small company, how do you allow for 2 of your 3 staff members being off for 25 + days With TB ?

I am told this could be a 6 week haul, and how do i know these people will take their medication everyday? I hear the rest of us are at risk if these people who have TB dont take their medication everyday.

What rights do we have as employers and other staff members, when it comes to people who have these highly contagious diseases.

[Petrichor]

I had an incident recently with an employee being off sick for 1 month and booked off for 1 more. The labour department advised me to teminate his employment due to illness, with the provision that he can return when he is better again. He is able to claim UIF for the period he is away. He has not returned yet, so I will see how it turns out when the 2nd month is completed. (All his leave had been used up) Not sure if this is something you can look into as well.

[johndice]

It's better to terminate the employee if he has a contagious disease at it may be spread to other employees. that being said, if the employee is one of your best then maybe you can wait for him/her to get well.

[Justloadit]

Great, until your employee approaches CCMA and states that he was unfairly dismissed.
Went through that one, and my HR man boched it up, and I landed up by paying 4 months of wages.

[ians]

This problem just got a whole lot worse, he is not responding to the TB medication and will need to be off for a while longer, quite a while.

[Dave A]

Once the sick leave allowance is used up, explain to the employee the options are unpaid leave or dismissal for incapacity.

The advantage of dismissal for incapacity is the employee can claim UIF.

[roryf]

Been through this too,several times.Like Dave says 'incapacity' but there are 2 types:

Temporary incapacity (Short term eg.early stages of TB)
Permanent incapacity (Long term)

Temporary incapacity,I think by law you have to keep the job open for the employee and permanent you can dismiss.We have been trying to get our TB employee off with a disability grant as he only has 30% of his lung function left.He has also used up all his UIF as he only worked for us for a short while.

The best is to find a good doctor that can book them of for either as you don't want a TB case hanging around infecting your other workers.

The usual TB medication usually kicks in after 2 weeks after taking the pills but I do know that there is also stronger stains now and they are harder to sort out.Our labour in SA is at a major risk due to many families staying within very close proximity to each other and that is how the TB spreads so fast.A few of our employees have not taken there initial medication and it just gets worse.We have encouraged guys to come forward if they feel that they have TB or HIV and we try and help as much as possible.Most of our employees usually come for help now that they have seen some of our success stories.

We do HIV/AIDs and TB training every year but I don't feel that it helps that much.Most of the guys just don't think that it will happen to them.