Made redundant after kidney donation!

[adamspat]

Hi all,

I am new to do this forum and just wondered if possibly anybody had experienced anything similar to mine which i will share below.

To cut a long story short i donated a kidney to my mother back in Feb 2020. I took a total of 12 sick days along with all my remaining holiday to recover. I have recently as of last week been made redundant. One of the scoring criteria was absence and i scored 1/5 due to my time off for the kidney donation. I have had no other time off at all with the company. I did challenge them on this and they were fully aware of the reasoning behind my time off. I engaged with them as early as possible and gave them plenty of notice in regards to the operation. I appreciate that this absence can be counted but morally this seems very unfair considering if it had not been counted i would not only have been safe and kept my job, but i would have scored higher than all my other team members (pool of 5).

If anyone has had any similar experiences I'd be interested to know.

Many Thanks

Pat

[Fr Pat]

I'm very sorry this happened to you. Very unfair. You might want to also post this at the FaceBook page of "living Donors on Line" and of "Living kidney Donors Support Group" as these days many more donors check in there rather than here and you would get more responses. I also wonder if your company might reconsider if you got a local newspaper or T.V. news program to feature your story? Most companies hate bad publicity.

[Michael]

I agree with Fr. Pat. In the US, there have been situations like yours where an employer terminated a living donor because of the time off and/or the medical expenses. The donor contacted the media to publicize the situation and sometimes the employer would reconsider. Of course, you have to wonder if that's the kind of employer you truly want to be employed by.