Government proposals for employers to provide sick pay from the first day of illness have been scrapped, it was announced yesterday.
Work and pensions secretary John Hutton said that employers had voiced “strong concern” about plans to change statutory sick pay.
The government’s proposals, part of the Green Paper on welfare reform, included ditching the three-day rule for employees, so that sick pay would be paid out from the first day of absence.
Employers had expressed concern that the changes would significantly push up absence costs and encourage staff to take more time off.
Hutton told a convention in Birmingham that the government had hoped to simplify the process of administering the scheme and protect vulnerable employees.
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