The General Workers Union has called for guidelines from the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations about what constitutes an illness that qualifies workers for sick leave. The request was made after complaints by employees that their managements were not qualifying certain conditions as sickness.

The union said it had for long been trying to obtain the agreement of managements about the removal of certain clauses in some collective agreements and had for some time been resisting the insistence by managements that certain situations should not qualify for sick leave. These included where a worker suffered sunstroke, was injured when off work, or in the case of women, period pains.

The GWU said it believed that a company doctor would be breaking the law when failing to certify workers sick if they fell under such criteria. This was why it was officially asking Labour and Industrial Relations director Dr Noel Vella to define what was a sickness that entitled one to sick leave.

It added that at the same time it had requested meetings with the Medical Association of Malta and the Malta Employers Association separately to discuss with them the ethics that company doctors should observe, in the light that certain doctors in many cases sought the company’s interests more than they did the health and care of the worker.