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Back in April, we wrote about a new briefing document that lifted the lid on the financial difficulty working people face when their sick pay doesn’t pay the bills: Read more here
Action Kidney Cancer is one of the organisations spearheading a joint effort by cancer and health charities to tackle the UK’s currently inadequate statutory sick pay arrangement, as the policy briefing sheds light on the severe impact faced by thousands of people who are only eligible for statutory sick pay if they are unlucky enough to fall ill.
The Cancer and Sick Pay Policy Brief estimates that of 127,000 people of working age diagnosed with cancer each year, 38,000 face a disastrous hit to their income, with the total number living with cancer who have been impacted estimated as at least 250,000 people. They are able to access just £116.75/week statutory sick pay, or no sick pay at all if they work multiple jobs below the £130/week earnings threshold.
Read the Cancer and Sick Pay Policy Brief here: Cancer and Sick Pay Policy Brief
Anyone interested in finding out how they could join like minded people to take action and support this campaign can find out more here.
Please take two minutes to support the campaign:
With the general election looming, the Safe Sick Pay campaign is encouraging people to write to their election candidates to raise the issue about statutory sick pay.
After people participate, a letter will be sent to candidates of their choice asking them to meet or state their position on sick pay.
Through the tool the Safe Sick Pay community organisers will map the data by constituency to identify where groups of 3 or more individuals are in a constituency and contact them individually to see if they’d be interested in approaching their candidate to meet as a local group of concerned citizens.
What will happen after letters sent:
Our community organisers are reaching out to meet up jointly, to invite the sub group to work together to try and secure a meeting with candidates of choice (but especially the front runner candidates). The volunteers will be supported with a toolkit as well as either a general zoom seminar. In our top target constituencies they will receive more personalised support. If they are part of local organisations or networks with the scope to increase local level interest they can also choose to recruit more names onto a local co-signed letter.
Sign up here to join the Safe Sick Pay General Election campaign emails and find out more about that.