One day in early 2018, I was cleaning in one of London’s most famous skyscrapers, when I realised I could barely move.

I was trying to lift a bin full of bottles, and felt a familiar sense of fatigue come over me, accompanied by severe pain in my lower back.

There was an intense feeling of anxiety too, knowing I had very little choice on what to do next. I had to persevere, and work through the pain, or risk losing my livelihood.

For at least 15 years I have had chronic fatigue, alongside other health issues, resulting in part from a lack of iron. I also have spinal problems.

Cleaning is a physically demanding job, with long shifts at unsociable hours, and one I’ve been doing full-time or in combination with other jobs for 18 years.

On that day, things came to a head because I had been forced to ignore my health problems and continue due to a lack of company sick pay.

The business I was working for was a big one, servicing some of London’s most iconic office and hotel buildings.

In my contract they had written that I was eligible for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP).

But the stark realities of my financial situation meant taking time off wasn’t an option.

SSP is less than £100 per week, which you only start receiving on the fourth day of illness.

The prospect of trying to pay my rent and support my family on that amount – having already lost three days’ pay – seemed impossible.

This is the equivalent of around 11 hours on minimum wage, and was less than half of what I would normally earn and need to get by.

That was even before facing the unofficial risks that come with precarious work, where you are always worried that if you rock the boat you could lose your job.

Eventually, trying to work through this exacerbated my health problems and I was signed off officially by my GP. I had to get surgery and took a month off.

It is estimated that only around half of UK employers have an occupational sick pay scheme

At this point, I had little choice but to take the time off for the procedure, but I was terrified about how I would cope.

Even though it was in my contract, I never got the sick pay I was entitled to because the company simply refused to pay it – despite my chasing it.

It made that time off so difficult my family struggled to pay the bills.

I had to cut back on all my spending, while friends and family offered to lend me money so I didn’t end up with unmanageable debt.

I stayed with that employer for four years, working on-and-off throughout the pandemic, before I was able to leave last year to change industry.

But there are millions of workers across the UK who face the same impossible choices if they get unwell, with access to only that less than £100 a week payment.

Over the past year, the Safe Sick Pay Campaign consulted with over 350 cleaners and found my experience was commonplace.

Only one in five had access to any sick pay, and more than a third said they had gone into work when sick.

It is estimated that only around half of UK employers have an occupational sick pay scheme.

It means that millions of people in the UK face an impossible choice when they get sick – to try to work through it, potentially spreading illness and making their own sickness worse, or taking time off they cannot afford.

Nearly 2million more workers slip through the cracks in the system and get no sick pay at all.

You need to earn over an average of £123 per week to be eligible, meaning many people on zero-hour contracts, or people with caring responsibilities, can find themselves ineligible for any sick pay.

This is the situation facing the army of cleaners, carers, delivery drivers and other key workers on whose labour the country runs.

That’s why it’s so important to create a safe sick pay system.

To protect workers, to create safe workplaces and to safeguard public health, sick pay needs to be in line with a worker’s wages – at least up to the living wage.

It needs to be available from the first day of illness, rather than the fourth, to stop people trying to work through sickness.

These are simple fixes that would improve millions of lives.

No one wants to get sick, but when we do we deserve to know we can take the time we need to get better without worrying about how to pay the bills.

We have a right to look after ourselves so that we can help other people and our families.

Rather than force millions of us into impossible positions, only making the cost-of-living crisis more brutal through winter and beyond, the Government must fix this, and create a safe sick pay system.

Being denied the sick pay I was due was an injustice, but the rate is so low anyway I would still have struggled – we need to raise Statutory Sick Pay beyond the current insulting level.

Like millions of others, I should have had the right to take time off, get better and get back to work to support my family.

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