One of our clients in Thailand has an employee who had recently joined them. They were just been informed that she had been diagnosed with stage 3 cancer before she joined them. They wanted to know about paid and unpaid sick leave. How many days of sick leave per Thailand labour law is allowed for the employee to take? Is it possible to take unpaid sick leave? We summarized the questions as follows:
1) How many days of sick leave is an employee entitled to?
Once someone becomes your employee, she is entitled to 30 days paid sick leave per year even though she has just joined the company recently. If she presents a medical certificate where the doctor instructs her to take how many days off, you will have to let her take it.
2) If she has utilized her sick leave, can you deduct from her pro-rated annual leave entitlement?
Yes because it is up to the company’s policy.
3) What happens if her annual leave has been utilized?
Then you can treat it as unpaid sick leave where you deduct from her salary the amount of pay which you would have paid her had she come to work.
Contact ThaiLawyers for Thailand labour law issues. We provide not only consulting on labour law, but also services in handling payroll, recruitment and staff outsourcing for multinational companies operating in Thailand.