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#1 Ryanair Stansted, number one, and the sick pay thread covers the money. This is the Ryanair absence management from the number one's chair, because the new joiners are frightened of it and the frightened ones fly sick, which is worse for everyone.
The system
An absence trigger system: the occasions of sickness in a rolling period are counted and a number of occasions triggers a conversation (the return to work interview with the base management), a further number triggers a formal stage, and a pattern (the Mondays, the days after the night stops, the days before the leave) is looked at separately. The system exists at every UK and Irish airline and Ryanair's is enforced consistently, which the crew experience as strictness.
What counts as a pattern
The sick calls that cluster around the days off, the night stops, the leave, the Christmas roster. The system is built to find the crew who call sick to extend a weekend, and it finds them, and they are the ones in the disciplinary threads. A genuine illness with a doctor's note that happens to be on a Monday is not a pattern; three Mondays in a quarter is.
The return to work interview
After every absence, a short conversation with the base management or the number one: what was wrong, are you fit, is there anything the base should know. Not a disciplinary. A record. The crew who treat it as an interrogation have the wrong idea; the crew who treat it as a formality and answer honestly are fine.
How the number ones handle genuine illness
I have a crew member with a chronic condition that flares and her absences are documented with the specialist's letter and the base knows, and the trigger system has a mechanism for documented conditions that the union made sure of. The genuinely ill crew member who calls sick properly, brings the note, does the return to work and flies when fit has nothing to fear from the system. The system is for the Monday pattern.
The sick pay reality
The sector pay lost on the direct contract and the statutory only on the agency one, as Leah's thread says. The money is the thing that makes the crew fly sick, not the trigger system, and the number ones know it and cannot fix the money.
For the new joiners
Call sick properly when you are sick, with the note after the self cert days, do the return to work honestly, and do not call sick on the Monday after a Marbella night stop unless you are actually ill, because the system is built for exactly that and it will find it. The frightened crew who fly with a fever are the ones I worry about. Call. The system is not the enemy. The pattern is.
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#2 Dublin number one, and 'the system is for the Monday pattern' is the sentence every new joiner should hear in the first briefing. The genuine illness with the note has nothing to fear. The Marbella Monday has everything to fear. Sean has it.
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#3 easyJet union rep, and the Ryanair trigger system is the UK system enforced consistently, as Sean says, and the documented condition mechanism is the thing the unions at both airlines made sure of. The return to work is a record, not an interrogation. Correct on all of it.
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#4 Ryanair, first winter, and I flew with a cold last week because I was frightened of the trigger, and this thread has told me I was wrong. The note and the return to work. Next time I call.
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#5 easyJet, and the money being the reason crew fly sick and not the trigger is the honest connection between my sick pay thread and Sean's. The number ones cannot fix the sector pay. They can fix the fear of the system.
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#6 Bergamo number one, and the Italian base runs the same system with the Italian medical certificate rules, and the pattern finding is the same. The crew who call sick on the Monday after Ibiza are known to every number one in the network.
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#7 Dublin, and the chronic condition mechanism with the specialist's letter is the thing I would tell any crew member with a condition: document it at the start, not at the third trigger. The base cannot help with what it does not know.
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#8 Ryanair Porto, and the agency year with statutory sick pay only is the year the Porto crew fly sick, and the conversion fixes half of it. Sean's thread is the other half: the system is not the enemy. The flu is.
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#9 @connordub next time you call, and the note after the self cert, and the return to work is two minutes with me or the base. The cold on the aircraft is the thing I would rather you did not do. The system agrees with me.
