I remember back in the early days of the 'cadetship' scheme, that I was doing an early post line training flight with a good female First Officer, who was obviously suffering from a bad cold. I told her that she was certainly unfit to fly and I would get the standby (if we had one! ) called out. She was extremely upset and said she needed the money otherwise had to choose between fuel to come to work or food. I am afraid that I stuck to my guns pointing out that it was likely that other crew members would be infected. I still remain deeply sad that I had to come to that conclusion. There has always been a sickness monitoring system in easyJet, whether a phone call from a 'trained medical person' to check that you were at home and what the symptoms were, to a 'friendly' chat with your Base Captain on your return. I know that Cabin Crew could be subject to disciplinary hearings after sickness and I told one that if she was subject to this to let me know, and I would attend as well and tell the investigator exactly why she had not been able to fly in my opinion. Unfortunately, I was not a 'trained medical practitioner'!!