Dear All

One of our engineers requested 6mths sabbatical to get married, do up his house ready for his new wife AND to set up his own central heating business.  He said that if his business failed he would still have a job to return to after the 6mths.  He is well known for running his business from work booking appts etc for out of work time.  Half the factory seems to use his services.  He was disciplined for using company time to arrange appts but that was a year ago so from the point of moving to the second stage of disciplining that has now lapsed.

His sabbatical request was not granted.  A week later he went off sick with work related stress.  At a meeting he said he felt undervalued, tired and had abdominal pain.  He also said he didn’t like his Dept. manager but in practise he reported into a line manager and rarely had any dealings with the Dept. manager.  He said that he had said to the L/M a week before he went off sick that he was stressed but the L/M has no record of that and in fact says the chap had asked for more work! 

He then sent in another request for sabbatical leave based this time on his stress would take 4-6mths to recover from as he was so ill.  He is not on any treatment for anything.  He has been offered a change of job too.  I wrote to his GP with the grudging permission of the employee.  I asked the usual question of the GP but also expressing concern that if he was so ill should he have treatment, did the GP know about the two requests for sabbaticals and the request for more work and that he did not report into the manager he allegedly had problems with.  I also said we would offer him a different job and a RTW programme.  GP signed him back to work! Great! No! The day before he was due back to work he went to the GP with stress, abdominal pain and now hypertension result signed off sick for 2wks on beta blockers.  GP says he is stressed.  No matter what time of day we call this man is never at home.  Should have been back today but now is signed off sick again because he had a ‘reaction to his medication.  Gp’s letter did not acknowledge any of my concerns including whether the tiredness could be due to the fact he works f/t here then does out off work job repairing central heating.  His wedding is now three wks away and he has 4wks holiday provisionally booked as A/L for that.  As he is so well known in the factory all the workforce are looking to see how long he can stay away!

Any suggestions please?

Sorry about the length of the email!

Sue