The Toronto Star reported a story about the federal Tories crackdown on government employees abusing their sick days. One might think that there would widespread support for this initiative. Not amongst readers of the Star:
Trying to deflect the focus from the messes & corruption that the Conservatives can’t seem to make go away these days by going after the workers won’t work this time. It will have a direct effect on the morale of those workers and that might effect how well services we tax payers need get done. Clean up your own house first.
This is nothing more than using a wedge issue to deflect from the senate scandal. ooooh people hate unions, let’s make them the enemy. Please people, don’t let this idiocy allow the senate scandal to take a back seat. Don’t allow them to manipulate you and prove them right in thinking we’re so stupid.
The Leftists in our country will stop at nothing to support their public sector comrades. Is there not one thing a government employee could do that would offend these folks?
Yes, they could Join the CPC.
Leftards and public employees mutually back-scratching. How “American-like”! 🙂
I wouldn’t have such an issue with public sector unions if only there was competition for the services.
They have a monopoly, in the private sector the law doesn’t allow it, so we need balance.
No public sector employee should be forced to join a union.
The amount of money that is extracted from taxpayers by this scam is in the billions. Time to shut this fraud down.
Many federal government employees bank their sick leave to be able to retire even EARLIER than they typically do.
It’s a huge scam that everyone knows about AKA systemic corruption. This crackdown is just another limp-wristed slap from the CPC that will go nowhere.
Canada’s public sector unions are our defacto communist party and as such is inherently corrupt, amoral and rapacious – it’s a mirror of the degenerate politics of its leadership.
As for the senate scandal, Harper has been a micro manager controlling every aspect of the cabinet, caucus and MPs – he alone should take responsibility but he’s not so that tells me all I need to know about Harper – CPC needs a leadership election – Kenny maybe?
Unlike many teachers here in Ontario, the banked sick days cannot be redeemed for cash. The typical public servant will,before retirement, obtain a doctor’s note claiming they are ill and must not go to work. The employee will then use up all their sick day credits and swing right into retirement. I have known situations where some 4 months of credits have been banked and the employee has in essence retired 4 months ahead of schedule at full pay and benefits.
It would require major changes to the existing collective agreements for the government to be able to put an end to all these abuses, so the idiot readers of the Star need not get their underwear twisted into a knot. Now what would be effective would be to end all public service unions.
The comment is probably right that the CPC is using this as a distraction. But, so what?
Slimming down sick days is not going to make a real difference. Until the streets of Ottawa are chromatic with pink slips, this is so much empty gesturing.
Does anyone really care what the Star writes….even if it is the truth?
in Nenshi Land(calgary)
city employees not only bank their sick days for retirement they also have full benefits if they are part time, also they can work overtime on the weekends at time and half if they are part time . talking the regular pay days off.
I have a sister in law that does it all the time and a brother in law still on sick days and vacation after retiring from the city last november
What does government and its employees provide to the taxpayer of Canada?
Apart from empty promises?
CPC should move forward. Acknowledge the senate expense abuses, call in an auditor, which they have done. Instead of playing footsy with the public service they should review the system and publically announce what they find. When they discover a guy who works, at best, 2 hours a day, call him out. If the media doesn’t co-operate then deal with Sun TV.
I suggested in another post that PMSH engage in ‘Converations with Canadians’ where he discusses a topic of national importance after which do a Q&A with an audience. I would ask CBC, CTV, Global and SUN for proposals and then pick SUN TV. I suggest that Canadians would turn in and the CPC could go a long way to establishing a right of center media outlet.
It amazes me the way the CPC kowtows to the media. Fall over themselves trying to be ‘just and fair’. It is such BS as Turdeau Sr did not give a rats behind what the vast majority thought. Harper actually comes across very well. Do the ‘Conversations’ and let the Liebels and Dippers blow in the wind. Soon enough nobody would be listening to them anyways.
This practice pretty much ended a decade ago. The principal reason sick leave banks exist is to cover the time shortfall before eligibility for disability insurance should the need arise in an illness with a long recovery or treatment phase. Federally sponsored disability coverage(via SunLife) has a 3 month waiting period from time of claim event. The whole sick leave argument is a strawman. The 18 days reflects an aging population and an increasingly difficult work environment. Productivity has taken a hit since the days of Paul Martin’s empire building and the CPC can’t manage squat. Piling on layers of middle managers and “performance managers” doesn’t get the job done either. Somebody still has to do the actual work. Attritioning staff doesn’t get the job done, and the public sector is no more efficient with the kind of work public servants do. Not every civil servant is a clerk. Computerized efficiency has increased the amount of work to be done manually, because fewer taxpayer activities escape oversight – the result is more detailed work on follow-up and fewer staff to do it. You guys need to separate union leaders and government hacks (incl MPs) from the rank and file.
Indeed, the NDP is the most corrupt party in Canada, which they show every time they get into power.
That is a great idea and I have thought that for a long time. PM Harper has to talk to the people, as the Ottawa press gallery hates him and what he stands for and distorts or misrepresents everything the Conservatives do.
The article by Greg Weston last week clearly shows the MSM bias and lies. Every party has a slush fund which comes out of donations to the party. Weston made it appear that it was only a CPC item and by omission suggested the taxpayer paid for it. I do not have the link at hand, but someone here linked to the article last week.
Skip, aren’t you making a number of untenable assumptions?
First, that the employee leaving is always going to go on disability insurance. Is this the case? What about retirement, when the employee can ‘cash in’ his untaken sick days to leave earlier but on full pay?
Second, the point in the comment was the public service employees take more sick days than the private sector. Empirically, it can’t be shown that IF you are public sector employee, THEN, you are subject to more illness than if you worked in the private sector.
Furthermore, the 18 banked sick days has nothing to do with ‘an aging population’. And an ‘increasingly difficult work environment’? How so?
And computers have increased manual work? Hmm.
Sorry, I think your arguments are weak.
Heh, in Toronto, a key problem now is that so many full-time teachers are booking off – and interestingly – always on a Friday or Monday. The Board doesn’t have enough substitutes to fill in for these, ah, ‘sick days’.
As for union leaders, they are to blame; they are parasites on the workers, and the unions are parasites on the taxpayer.
A lefty friend of mine posted this on facebook this morning:
“My fellow Canadians. We have all just witnessed a sad spectacle, a prime minister so burdened with corruption in his own party that he is unable to do his job and lead the country, a party leader playing for time, begging for another chance. This is not how a prime minister should act.”
-Stephen Harper April 21, 2005
Of course, combined with the TorStar story, it shows that so long as they keep manufacturing scandals, the left will always be after Harper for something.
I live in Ottawa, every Friday there’s like half the normal volume of rush hour traffic. Every Friday.
Does this mean that Queensway traffic will be even MORE crowded at 3 pm every day.
ET, for the umpteeth time, Tony Clement is not talking about teachers, nor anybody in the provincial or municipal service. Broad-brush stereotyping of public servants is no better than stereotyping anyt other diverse community. As I said, the practice of cashing out sick days as time prior to retirement is becoming increasingly uncommon, in part, because doctors are professional less willing to sign off on “sick” employuees for long, unsubstantiated periods. The various provincial colleges see the falsification of medical reports as an actionable issue for doctors. It does happen that employees come to retirement very sick, and exhaust their sick benefits before medical retirement. Further, the civil servants with large banks of sick leave, tend to be employees who started very young and have accrued sick time while still young and healthy. Many LARGE employers have similar programs. Private sector companies with less than 5000 employees aren’t even in this discussion. Managing productivity in any large organization is a very complex process.
ET, your experience is not from a production environment. Computerization has enabled large populations and tasks to be analysed in much more detail than previous. But much of what government does is govt-to-individual interaction. The sheer volume of processes means there are more cases with a greater in-depth need to investigate and resolve – stuff that used to get lost in the crack or not pursued by either side, is now up front and centre because of computerization.
It has become an increasingly more difficult work environment because computerized analysis has increased the depth of work assignment efforts, meaning hours per case has sky-rocketed (or would if there was enough hours in the day), because, due to Tony’s emphasis on “performance management”, the legions of “performance analysts” question everything now that a civil servant does. Experience no longer counts for anything. Only the analyst’s checklists of things the civil servant now has to spell out, whether relevant or not, is all that counts.
I am a chief steward in a federal local in Toronto. I have 500+ souls to sooth and smooth. I have no time for the shenanigans of Ottawa, union or Parliament, and could care less about the politics. I have dismissals, forced medical retirements, cancer cases, heart attacks, suicides, public health concerns, vengeful managers and stupid employees to steer through a modern workplace, in order to see that the employee and their family get through their crises as best they can and to return a good employee back to full productivity in the quickest possible time. I stick-handle Ottawa, local management, WSIB, Sun Life, social agencies, occasionally the police, terminally ill employees, family, deaths and politicians. A lot of people are sick on Fridays and Mondays because they’re burnt-out by the end of the week.
I can’t speak for provincial and municipal unions, but I know some of the federal public service very well. While there may be questions as to the value of certain programs, the people who attempt to administer them are as good and as trustworthy and conscientious as any employee anywhere. All the private sector demionstrates is that they are willing make people work sick. That’s an entirely different debate.
No, it means the federal employees work a compressed schedule and are OFF Fridays.
Sorry to burst your bubble but there is no impending crisis on the issue. Getting rid of the “liability” will allow them make their books looks good and pander to voters. I am a Fed and have somewhere over 1,000hrs banked, because I don’t abuse it and neither do the majority of employees. Yes some do, but then some senators pad their expenses as well and politicians spend millions on useless stuff to get elected.
To most of us it’s an insurance policy if something really bad happens, not a cash cow. Generally the people who abuse it are the ones with no leave balance at all, as they use it the moment they get it. That’s not a leave issue, that’s a staffing issue that managers and HR departments refuse to deal with, because there is risk involved.
I have not met anyone in the three organizations I work for, use sick leave in bulk near the end of their career. It’s is rare and pretty much socially unacceptable anywhere I have worked.
Focus on building work ethic and loyalty and productivity goes up and costs go down. My problem is being a gun owning Public Servant, the Libs, NDP and Greens scapegoat me for being a gun owner and the Conservatives scapegoat me for being a Public Servant.
So why does rush hour start at 3:00 pm? If they’re working their 40 hours in 4 days they should be starting earlier and working later. 8:00am to 6:00 pm, right?
Skip – I’m not convinced by your argument.
First, the fact that Clement isn’t talking about the public service in provincial and municipal sectors isn’t relevant. The public service and their unions are, in my view, similar in behaviour, and wages, benefits and pensions – ie all far, far above that in the private sector. So, my points refer to any and all in the public sector service.
You say that the fewer sick days taken in the private sector is due to the private sector ‘making the employee come to work sick’. Really?
Then, you declare that the reason so many public sector employees book off sick on Fridays is because they ARE sick due to the overload of work they do in their public service jobs. I find that hard to believe. The public service UNIONS don’t allow such work overload! Are you seriously claiming that public sector employees are ‘worked to death’ and work harder than those in the private sector?!
You say that public sector employees come to retirement very sick. So? The same thing happens in the private sector. These few are not the issue being discussed. What IS discussed is the high ratio of sick days taken by the public sector vs the private sector. Your reasons, so far, are not convincing – ie, that the public sector people work ‘much harder’, until they are sick, than the private sector; that private sector employees are ‘forced’ to come to work sick. Sorry – those don’t explain the percentages and I find them weak arguments.
The list of problems you deal with is no different in the public and private sector; we are the same humans and afflicted with the same problems.
Again, just looking at the data, how is it that the ratio of days taken off in the public sector exceeds in every case, that in the private sector? Oh, and those special Fridays. Yes, yes, I know you say it’s because the public sector employee is worked to death and collapses on Fridays and need Monday to recuperate. Hmm.
ET, as before, I’m not going to waste my time debating with you. There’s no point. You paid little attention to what I actually wrote, which is your usuual style. Live in whatever world your university retirement entitles you to, and enjoy it. I’ll continue tomorrow to meet with directors, assistant directors and senior managers of the federal public service to help them sort out productivity and personnel issues, and try to do the job they actually pay me to do.
That’s when all the soccer moms (and dads) head out to pick up precious from public school…
Bullshit! I spent many years in the Public Service and witnessed this abuse on a daily basis. You can spout all the PSAC propaganda you want but the facts speak for themselves.
Don’t try to blow smoke up my ass.
What does excessive absenteeism in the public sector mean to Canadian families?
Assuming that the reported figures are correct, federal civil servants take off eleven more days per year than their private sector counterparts. This is roughly 4.8% of the annual working days, or over $2 billion of excess cost in the federal government’s $42 billion payroll.
Each Canadian family pays $219 annually to support this inefficiency. The Federal government represents roughly 16% of Canada’s total public sector salary cost. If similar ratios apply to all sectors each Canadian family pays $1371 annually to cover the cost differential between civil service and private sector absenteeism – not a trivial amount!
Skip, don’t get into personal insults. Never, ever move into personal insults. Stick to the issues. I have read your posts; as I said, they are weak arguments and don’t seem to rest in any data base.
Your excuses for the high ratio of sick days taken by the public service is: ‘they work harder in the public service’ and ‘the private sector makes them come to work sick’. I think you need a data base rather than just your opinion.
Then, you inform us that the reason the public sector employee so often takes Fridays off, is because they are so overworked by their work load the rest of the week that they effectively collapse on Fridays. Oh, and they need Monday to recover. Again, where’s your data base?
Then, when people point out that traffic is high at 3:00 pm, ie, it’s those civil service employees leaving for the day, you inform us (without any data base) that they are picking their children up from school’. Hmm.
Again, looking at the data, it shows us that the public sector’s ratio of sick days is more than double that of the private sector. The reasons you provide (overwork, exhaustion) are not substantiated by any data.
FACTS matter.
“A lot of people are sick on Fridays and Mondays because they’re burnt-out by the end of the week.”
GIVE ME A BREAK!!!
What are they burnt out from? It sure as hell isn”t from overwork .Maybe its from trying to look busy. Typical crap from not ONLY a bureaucrat but a shop stewart no less.
You mean the streets of Hull …. no?
“ET, as before, I’m not going to waste my time debating with you.”
Nope…you waste our time and money as a union fraud. Compressed work week= I work 23 hours a week and get paid for 40. Skip to the loo my darling. How would you know about traffic on Friday,when you are off on Wednesday?
Lots of civil servants work unpaid OT, think Fish habitat types and we just reviewed a 15,000 page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in 30 days and that was one of 5 big EIS’s on our plate. Along with the 60 or so other files on my desk. I know that it does not fit the narrative, but most Civil Servants care deeply about their work and service to Canadians. They do that despite the best efforts of senior management to create a Cluster F**K. Frankly working for the CPC is looking more and more like a Soviet Central Planning committee and a Stalin 5 year plan. Not what I was expecting from them, was hoping they would push accountability and manager authority further down, but they are speeding up the process started by the Liberals instead.
ET;
What Skip is trying to sell goes against most of what I see and hear on the streets. When family members talk about their relatives work experience in the federal system it is not about how hard they work. Invariably it is the opposite. Not only is the pay scale higher, for equal work, in government but the benefit packages can be hugh.
Have you ever heard from a government employee how good they have it? If it isn’t about how hard they work it is all about how complex their work is. It is like the teacher union. More money for fewer children because today’s kids have so many complex problems they have to deal with.