I seem to say this a lot, but its because I spend a lot of my time now in the gym, and sauna as a very cheap passtime, but I was talking to one of the blokes who works there yesterday.

We were talking about sickness and the bosses attitude to it. The blokes brother had worked for the Council, and had had a heart attack (his brother is nearly 60). He'd applied for retirmeent on grounds of ill-health and been refused. In fact Council's seem to be making it impossible for anyone to retire on grounds of ill-health. A while ago one of the Council's manual employees ffrom the Council depot was told by the Works Doctor that they should return to work. The bloke had been seriously ill, for a while. Despite protesting that he couldn't return to work he was left with virtually no choice. He returned to work and four days later he was dead!

The Council has a policy for so called Management of Absenteeism. It is in fact a disciplinary policy. It basically says that if you have more than 10 days off sick during a year, or five separate periods of absence you have to be taken through the procedure. The Manager can demand that you provide a sick note from the doctor for any individual days sickness. Your sickness is monitored and you are interviewed in the terms of the procedure for any further days off. Then if you continue to have time off, you move though further stages of the procedure up to stag four where basically they can just sack you.

Five years ago when the Council was reorganised and I ended up working for a different boss I found myself coming under the policy. Although it had been months and motnhs since I'd had any time off, and for years had had not time off at all. My new boss interviewed me. Could it have been a co-incidence that in the weeks preceding I had been leading the unions opposition to the reorganisation??? Despite the fact that I only just came in the terms of the procedure by having had 11 days off sick in a 12 month period I was told I would be procesed under it, and that I had to produce a doctor's note even for a single day's absence. I raised a Grievance under the Council's grievance procedure which I eventually won at the JCC, but that took months by which time I was effectively out of the procedure anyway.

BUt this seems common that Council's in particular are using such policies both as a way of disciplining staf, and as in my case it is wide open as a way of getting at union militants. But they also seem to be using it as a means of saving money too. Apparently, my old Council since I left has simply sacked people on a number of occasions for being off sick. The bloke at the gym I was talking to told me he qualified under the rule of 85 but the Council were refusing to allow him to go - though a number of bosses have been allowed to take early retirement on grounds of redundancy recently.

My wife is another case in point. She was for many years a mainframe computer operator at the Council. The job was in fact a very heavy one believe it or not. The boxes of paper used in the line printers weigh 40lbs, and to get them into the bottom of the printer from where they are fed is impossible to do in accordance with proper manual handling procedure. Not that that would have mattered she started work there in 1987, and it wasn't until she began to complain about problems with her back that the Council actually put the workers there on a manual handling course - that was in 1999 12 years later!!! But in addition to that every month there would be a delivery of this paper, and some paper for the huge Siemens Laser printer which was even more difficult to load. Beacause the Council years ago sold off a large part of its Car park to Sainsburys next door there is no room for delivery lorries. So the delivery lorry parked down the road outside Sainsburys, and the Operators - nearly all women - had to carry a hundred boxes of this paper around 100 yards or so into the building. It was pretty impossible to use a trolly because of the kurbs on the roadside. Male managers in the IT section used to sit, and watch all this happen, whilst it was argued that it was apprently also not the job of the porters! When I started there even though I didn't even work in that Department I couldn't for shame see the operators struggle with the paper and used to go and help. Fortuntaely, at the time I had a boss whose favourite motto was "Heart is on the Left, Wallet is on the Right". In fact after numerous hospital visits it turned out that she had arthritis of the spine, a partially slipped disc, and some other damage to her spine. But when she went to see the union's solicitors to see about putting in a claim they said that the Council would argue that you couldn't prove it was due to the job. Strange that every other worker in their also had back problems then eh???

As is the nature of arthritis the problems with her back got worse. A couple of years ago she had two months off because she was in agony. The Council sent her to see the Works Doctor. Their conclusion. You should work through the pain, despite the fact that her own doctor and two separate physiotherapists said that was the last thing she should do. Secondly, look for another job because if you have any more time of sick you will be sacked!!!!! So not only no compenswation for having your health damaged, but if you have time off sick as a result you will be sacked.

Fortunately, the last couple of years she's been working on PC support after hey scrapped the mainframe. But because the Council's offices are very cramped - they've leased a lot of space out to other organisations, and of course find the room for massive offices for the bosses - trying to get at people's PC's stuck on the floor amongst a mountain of other clutter isn't the easiest thing in the world. It involves a lot of kneeling. She has now started to have trouble with her knees as a result, and because of trying to avoid strain on her back. Her doctor said a few weeks ago, "If you still want to be walking in two years time give up your job. Human knees are not built to withstand the weight of the body kneeling on them for any length of time."

As a result of having a couple of weeks off with her knees - and despite not having any time off for a year before that all of the hassle of the procedure has been invoked again, and they have now made it clear that they don't want her to work in that department any more. Of course that won't stop them being prepared to ruin someone else's knees doing the same job.

Part of the problem with Health and Safety law is that it gives employers a way out. Firstly, it says the employee is responsible for heir own Health and Safety, and secondly in a case like that of my wife above it means they can turn round and say you'll have to do another job in order to protect your health and we have a responsibility to move you. Of course what they move you to is likely to be some even lower paid, lower status job so they hope you will just leave. Nor does the Disability Discrimination Act help. You would think that if you have been made partially disabled from doing a particular job the least you could expect was that you might get some protection, that you might be able to expect that the employer has to modify your job in order to protect your health. But no, because they have the all encompassing get-out of "only if its reasonable for them to do so."