Federal Public Service Compensation & Benefits

[PuckChaser]

Report to MIR with the flu?  Not service related. After five days cease to be a member and collect EI?

Huge difference? We don't bank sick days. We use them if we're actually sick, not as some psuedo-benefit that we bank for retirement.

As long as there is a short, medium and long term sick leave policy that doesn't screw people for legitimate illness/injury, then I have 0 sympathy for you having it taken away due to abuse.

 

[Occam]

Huge difference? We don't bank sick days. We use them if we're actually sick, not as some psuedo-benefit that we bank for retirement.

As long as there is a short, medium and long term sick leave policy that doesn't screw people for legitimate illness/injury, then I have 0 sympathy for you having it taken away due to abuse.

That's the thing - the overwhelming majority of employees aren't abusing it - and the government's own study shows that.  Clement fudges the numbers in whatever manner suits the government.

 

[Northern Ranger]

So now we count weekends?  Stats?  Way to screw the figures up.  As for the aboriginal spirit friends that would be only for the aboriginals I suspect and considering how many are in the PS it would be a drop in the bucket compared to other types of religious holidays that are taken.  Can't wait for them to come up with the Cf plan on sick days 

Report to MIR with the flu?  Not service related. After five days cease to be a member and collect EI?

I should have clarified the last sentence or rather started with.  What is next...report to Mir....
IMHO it's all about taking something away that was given in a bargaining process in the past. Somewhere something was given up to get what we have today. 

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Somewhere something was given up to get what we have today.

Yup.  It's called a balanced budget.

 

[Remius]

Le Droit has a good summary of the proposal. I suspect it is a barfaining position, and the endstate  will be more or less what Canada Post got - 7 days per year, max rollover of 5, unused cashed out annually, short term disability at 70%, with old sick credits used to top up short term disability up to 100%.

My thoughts exactly.  Canada Post does not even call it sick leave, just personal leave.  You can use it for whatever but you have the gist of it. Clement is lowballing and waiting to see how the unions will react.  Then he'll come up.  Back and forth and we'll likely see this being the result.

 

[Occam]

Can't speak for the unions' official reaction, but the reaction I'm seeing from my Facebook circle of PS friends is "Get stuffed!".

 

[Colin Parkinson]

That's the thing - the overwhelming majority of employees aren't abusing it - and the government's own study shows that.  Clement fudges the numbers in whatever manner suits the government.

and that "liability" disappears when the employee leaves. I am fine with that, because I see that sick leave bank as insurance, not as accruing benefit.

 

[PuckChaser]

and that "liability" disappears when the employee leaves. I am fine with that, because I see that sick leave bank as insurance, not as accruing benefit.

Which is the right way to look at it. You don't need that insurance if the mechanisms are there to cover you for longer term illnesses. Sick leave, regardless of the unions will spout, is not and should not be an accuring benefit. The intent of sick leave isn't for you to bank 250 days for retirement leave, its to ensure you're not financially disadvantaged for having an illness or injury.

As well, so what if the majority of employees aren't abusing it? All it takes is one bad apple to abuse it and they ruin it for everyone. Look at what happened to our IR package.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

But that abuse can be dealt with if you train your managers and support them with competent HR staff and senior management that has some balls to support the frontline manager.

 

[Occam]

Which is the right way to look at it. You don't need that insurance if the mechanisms are there to cover you for longer term illnesses. Sick leave, regardless of the unions will spout, is not and should not be an accuring benefit. The intent of sick leave isn't for you to bank 250 days for retirement leave, its to ensure you're not financially disadvantaged for having an illness or injury.

Hypothetical situation:

I have 120 days of sick leave banked.

I have a heart attack requiring me to take 8 weeks off. (No idea if that's a realistic amount of time, but let's run with it)

Under the existing system, I'm paid 100% of my salary for the full 8 weeks (40 working days), and still have 80 days sick leave left.

Under the proposed system, I get 100% of my pay for the first week, then no pay for one week, then 6 weeks at 75% pay.

Yeah, I'm gonna sign right up for that.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The problem with allocated and banked sick leave is that it makes a personal quota out of what should be a pooled resource.  It's basically insurance, and insurance works on the principle that a whole bunch of people participate but only a small number make claims.

>Somewhere something was given up to get what we have today. 

Not necessarily.  Many trade unionists discuss negotiations over specific points in two ways: "win" (get something for nothing), and "tradesies".  Of course if you can "win", you can also "lose"; but that is overlooked (or never admitted) which is why some labour disputes produce a crop of startled employees when they realize they are going to be allowed to walk a picket line for several weeks.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

You mean like BC teachers? ;D

 

[PuckChaser]

I have 120 days of sick leave banked.

I have a heart attack requiring me to take 8 weeks off. (No idea if that's a realistic amount of time, but let's run with it)

How many people retire without having that heart attack or use the sick leave? I completely agree there needs to be a robust system to help people through short/long term illness. Allowing you to bank sick leave and use it as regular leave prior to retirement is a complete joke and waste of tax dollars. You want people compensated for being healthy? I'd rather see them supported to GET healthy and back to work.

 

[Remius]

How many people retire without having that heart attack or use the sick leave? I completely agree there needs to be a robust system to help people through short/long term illness. Allowing you to bank sick leave and use it as regular leave prior to retirement is a complete joke and waste of tax dollars. You want people compensated for being healthy? I'd rather see them supported to GET healthy and back to work.

You make sound like everyone does that.  Plenty of people retire without using any of their banked sick leave.  In my shop alone two people retired and both had over 6 months accumulated and never touched it.  It may have been like that once where people would abuse it right left and centre but managers are holding people accountable and doctors are reluctant to sign off on any long term chit.  Don't believe the hype.  The people that abuse it are the exception.  Not the rule.

 

[Northern Ranger]

You make sound like everyone does that.  Plenty of people retire without using any of their banked sick leave.  In my shop alone two people retired and both had over 6 months accumulated and never touched it.  It may have been like that once where people would abuse it right left and centre but managers are holding people accountable and doctors are reluctant to sign off on any long term chit.  Don't believe the hype.  The people that abuse it are the exception.  Not the rule.

Couldn't have said it better.

 

[DBA]

Banking sick leave as 'days' means every promotion or raise also applies to those banked days. Wasn't that big a deal when public service pay wasn't that great but these days it's just too large a cost / liability.

Might be worthwhile to do it similar to how a lot of the private sector does vacation pay: bank it as a $ amount instead of as days. On promotion or getting a raise do a top up for the current year only.

 

[PuckChaser]

You make sound like everyone does that.  Plenty of people retire without using any of their banked sick leave.  In my shop alone two people retired and both had over 6 months accumulated and never touched it.  It may have been like that once where people would abuse it right left and centre but managers are holding people accountable and doctors are reluctant to sign off on any long term chit.  Don't believe the hype.  The people that abuse it are the exception.  Not the rule.

I didn't say there was systematic abuse, a few posts ago I said one bad apple ruins the bunch. It just takes one of those guys with 6 months accumulated getting paid while sitting at home (at what, $30k conservatively?) for the public to want it fixed. Look at Leslie and his $75k move across town. The optics of the current sick leave plan are bad, and it needs an overhaul. With an adequate long term sick leave plan, no one will miss their banked sick days anyways, right?

As well, everyone else is getting bit by budget crunches and benefits reviews, why shouldn't the public service?

 

[Remius]

My issue isn't with budget crunch and all that.  It's how they are misleading to justify what they are doing.  The PBO has proven Clement fudged numbers were wrong and that sun media report about public servants getting 160 days of paid leave a year was so preposterous that it was laughable.

Can we have a better system? Sure.  But not by waging war on the public sector.

 

[Occam]

Allowing you to bank sick leave and use it as regular leave prior to retirement is a complete joke and waste of tax dollars. You want people compensated for being healthy? I'd rather see them supported to GET healthy and back to work.

Where is this "allowing you to bank sick leave and use it as regular leave" coming from?  Where is that allowed?  As others have said, doctors are reluctant to sign off on long term illnesses unless they're absolutely sure they're legit.  If someone is determined to screw the system, they're going to get a doctor to flip a bogus note whether they're going to use sick leave, or they're going to use short/long term disability leave.

There is no liability on the books for sick leave.  It doesn't become a liability until you actually claim against your banked days.  If you retire without using the banked days, that liability goes poof into nothingness.

If the government wants to argue that there is a liability for banked days, then that liability has a value (even if you don't utilize the benefits and they go poof when you retire).  If that's their position, then let's see them pony up something in exchange for it.  They won't do that because even they realize that there's no value to an unclaimed bank of sick days.

I'm tired of this rush to the bottom as far as benefits go.  Even my non-CF, non-PS friends agree that sick days are something every worker should have.  If it's a valuable benefit, then give it to everyone because they need it, instead of taking it away from those who have it to make those who don't feel better.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I think the number of sick days is probably starting to rise over the last few years anyway; people are getting incredibly burnt out.  The workload has increased significantly, mostly due to a lot of stupid internal processes to get anything done, plus reporting everything to everyone, and doing 'risk assessments', 'business cases' and 'focused working groups' on every commonplace activity.  Add to that a large number of managers that can't/won't make decisions, and some of the odd byproducts of the EX pay incentive KPIs, and the huge holes left by people retiring with no replacements, and the GAFF is spiraling pretty low.

I think that the majority of public servants are really doing it because they want to do the right things for Canadians and are getting ground down by all this constant attack from the gov't they are working for.  I think that Gazebo Tony has probably pushed them too far and is mostly looking for a scapegoat on a made up election issue, to distract people from all the actual things not going well in the country.