Sick leave in the public sector? (title amended by MNHQ)

[Cutecat78]

Not really an AIBU but wonder what happens in other workplaces as I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.

I work for the LA. Loads of redundancies and loads of people going on "long term sick".

Call me cynical but the people who do this (there are two repeat offenders - oh and our manager who was moved to our team and didn't want to be then went on 6 months sick leave on full pay) do not seem stressed they just go off with it or a bad back when they don't like their job (they couldn't possibly leave and work somewhere else as then they might miss out on redundancy in the next wave of cuts - which have been every year for the last 5/6).

Offender one has been suspended for 4 months on a disciplinary - but is now "on long term sick leave" as his GP doesn't seem impartial to handing him out sick notes like smarties. Last year he had 3 months off with a bad back and the year before had about 4 months off with said back but has also had time off being suspended too - he's utterly incompetent and anywhere other than the LA he would have been sacked years ago.

Offender 2 has been off for 7/8 months (1st 6 months full pay, next 6 1/2 pay). Also utterly incompetent (moans constantly about being over worked whilst swanning out of office for 2 hour nail appt etc).

She had been told to come back or she will be dismissed. Although when we questioned where she was our manager informed us "well she has so much leave to take".

Our LA's are going bankrupt yet this is allowed to carry on because of some overly PC policies on acid.

It's so frustrating.

No, absolutely not First but public sector employees are (mainly) low paid and badly treated. I think the OP is being judgmental and naive.. long may she/he last with learning about life.

I did refer to her as being evil, she/he misquoted (presumably me) as being called an 'evil bitch'. Certainly not what I said but shehe/ may have been thinking all by themself.

I totally get your frustration OP. I had a long career in the public sector and the piss taking was rife. So much so that the whole department I worked in was shut down due to cuts. I now live abroad where there is no sick pay, no free healthcare and very little welfare. Not surprisingly people work until they are in their late 70's and die of illnesses that are curable in the UK. Threads like this make me realise that people the UK are so spoiled and entitled. And yes, I have suffered from very poor mental health, if you are genuinely struggling, fine but I'd say most of the long term sick brigade are just lazy. As a dear friend once said, "the gravy train will soon stop as there is nothing left in the larder." Can you make the move into the private sector where hard work and dedication is better rewarded?

Just wondering what the point of this thread is .... OK fair do's, you know people at your workplace you think are swinging the lead fair enough. But you do know there are people on MN who have experienced long term health issues or struggling with depression etc right?

So if you want to hit a raw nerve then start talking about all these lazy shirkers with bad backs and fake depression. That's really going to solve your problem isn't it.

Pick your audience.

Some people take the piss when it comes to sickness leave. Most do not

That's fine but the OPs default position is listing out the shirkers in their workplace and giving chapter and verse about how conclusive it is they are just a bunch of 'sick-notes'. And their point is??

Nice

The two weeks off after a bereavement was , i believe, intended to illustrate a very short time off.

Have any of the people on this thread who genuinely suffer from physical or mental ill health and have to take a lot of time off ever gleefully announced their intentions to their colleagues?

The OP makes valid points.

I have only ever known one person take long term sick leave in almost 4 decades of working in London (spine tumour). I wonder why workers in the public sector are so much more susceptible to illness.

A study should be done.

Does nobody remember the thread from the young GP on here? She was surprised at the number of patients 'just coming in for the sick note'. When she wanted to run tests and look at new treatments to help them recover they weren't interested. Just wanted their note extending.

Why don't people understand that the OP is not on about people who are really ill? Some people do take the piss and that is what this thread is about.

It seems that certain posters would rather insult the OP or accuse her of being judgemental whilst they are being judgemental themselves.

Sickness levels on average are 60% higher in the public sector.

OP, I think you are behaving well in the face of some quite aggressive and blinkered challenges. OP is not saying that everyone is taking advantage of the system, but that some people undoubtedly are. Those people make it much harder for those who are genuinely sick, whose sick leave OP is clearly not begrudging.

We are lucky in this country to have something of a safety net if we are ill. If SOME people continue to abuse the system, that safety net may one day disappear.

Surely we all know those who play the system and are aware of those who don't? Some posters seem unaware of (and unsympathetic towards) the effect that excess sick leave has on those holding the fort and the employer as a whole. There are two sides to this. Failing to see this and calling the OP evil does those posters no favours.

The public sector generally has higher standards in terms of treating its employees so that's probably why you get more people treated "fairly" (in their eyes) than the private sector. Or at least that is the perception

OP have you ever worked in the private sector to be able to find anecdotal comparisons?

Helpful Once you account for age (public sector workers tend to be older on average as you have more people staying for a long time) and policies in healthcare settings where people can't work with ill people if they have a cold etc themselves, plus the fact that if you work in a hospital or school etc you pick up every bug going, the difference isn't that great.

I have worked in the public sector for over 20 years and there are some people like the OP describes, but it isn't unique to the public sector and there are also plenty of hard working dedicated people who try their best to pick up the pieces when short staffed.

And it is often made worse because we rarely get temps in to cover long term sick due to recruitment bans, or the work being too specialist, or shortages of people with the right skills and experience because pay is often lower than similar jobs in the private sector.

Work can be very stressful (imagine spending every day dealing with abused children, or people who are dying or very sick or have sufferered terrible illnesses and injuries) and sometimes there is the sheer frustration of dealing with policies that seem to be put in place simply to stop you getting your job done.

My department probably looks on paper like it has a terrible sick record, because of the long term sick people there are three with cancer, one with a chronic and dibiliating condition who has needed several operations and had complications and another who may be swinging the lead and is in the process of being managed out of the door.

For balance though, we have many more people who are almost never sick. I have probably had less than a day a year on average in my whole career and we recently had someone who retired after working for us for nearly 40 years who had never had a day off sick.

What is more frustrating in our department is that some people seem to think that they can pick and choose what work they do and if they don't like a particular type of work, simply refuse to do it, and threaten or actually go off on sick for stress and management let them get away with it and the rest of us have to pick up the shitwork and get on with it.

I work in the private sector and DH worked for a long time in the public sector. The difference in absenteeism levels was shocking.

For me, the expression "loads of people going long term sick" in the OP's OP, then citing just a two instances was very provocative.

But then I suppose saying I know two people would have made less of a gripping post.

The point made up thread that the safety net we have may disappear because of abusers is not the case. It will disappear because of ideological objections to the welfare state. Do we really think that council housing is being rolled up because of hordes of old dears in 4-bedroom properties? All those terrible people with one bedroom too many? No, it's because of fundamental opposition to welfare.

In terms of sick leave, any humane system of help too those in need will be abused by the calculating, but the mass who are genuine become invisible, and their needs overshadowed by a focus on the few.

The thing that made me ill (although I didn't actually take any sick leave for it) was having to carry the work of a colleague who did exactly as the Op described.

On her return, the continual threat of her raising a bullying or harassment grievance against me, or of her going off again with 'stress' if I tried to help her to actually do her job (after a very long and extremely gentle phased return) was almost as bad. In many ways with the constant walking on egg shells, it was worse.

Sadly it is almost impossible to get rid of these people. And I'll hold up my hands and say that the process of dismissing her scares me - she would be backed up to the eyeballs with legal and union representation, whereas I'd have fuck all.

I looked in taking over a department of an LA. 12 staff. 3 off long term sick. One had been on and off for 3 years. The union wanted to force tupe - looking into the staffing costs and the turnover of RH department I could see why they where trying to off load it. They ended up making all the staff redundant and shutting it down. With the private sector picking up the leases cheap.

Seen the same in my wife's old school two off long term sick out of sick both swinging the lead.

My business 25 staff. Had one long term sickness in the last 5 years. Then again we only pay SSP.

echt I completely agree, although having had to manage a malingering, malicious bully who has openly claimed that she would bring us all down with her if any attempt was made to properly address her appalling behaviour, my usual bleeding heart socialism is sorely tested.

Fwiw, this colleague and others like her (in my admittedly limited personal experience) are the first to bleat about benefit claimants and to display council house envy. Their hypocrisy is astounding.

I work in the public sector. I've had a lot of time off with a very very bad back. to the point where I can't move.

And as for stress and depression. I've also had 6 months off with stress. Aren't public sector jobs high stress due to lack of control by the employee? It was Micheal Gove that caused my breakdown, not me swinging the lead.

I used to work in the public sector. Sadly i am also a kanic deoressive and was carrying an undiagnosed case of saocoidosis. When the sarcoids began to really have an effect i becan a spiral of continious depression. This affected my work... and lo.. the menagement ignored all their own policies in people with mental health issues and started a capability review with the express objective of forcing me out of my job.

The management team was a bunch of bullies. They could and should have followed their policies but instad they took it upon themselves to must get rid of someone.

In the end I was off for over a year before leaving. I could see evidence of poor treatment of staff everywhere. I would still be in work if it was not for them.

I think the difficulty with stress (and I am not for a second doubting the validity of your situation, Orange) is that those of us left behind doing pretty much exactly the same type of work in exactly the same environment (I'm office based, so entirely different to teaching or medicine) are left to pick up the slack. It makes us, rightly or wrongly, cynical and question some people's suitability for anything more pressured than basic filing.

Can I just reiterate that I did not say that everyone who takes long term sick is swinging the lead.

I also did not say that I have no understanding or empathy of the struggle people suffering with MH issues face.

Tbh, under the public sector you need to have been somewhere for a long time to get anywhere near the sickness talked about here. Dh was signed off for a fortnight last year and didn't have enough sick leave to cover it, which was ironic given that the workplace had brought his illness on. I have had far better sickness leave allowances in the private sector than I have in public, as well as being better paid and better treated.

Lots of DH's colleagues are off at regular intervals, their workplace treats them appallingly.

My mum used to work in the public sector and she could predict with a fair degree of accuracy when certain colleagues would go off sick.

e.g this colleague would take several weeks off next April. That colleague will take a few weeks off next May and again in September.

She knew because her colleagues would openly admit to what they were planning.

It was a bit of an in-joke that when people were being taken on and signing their new employment contract, the first thing they'd do would be to skip to the back pages to find out how much sick pay they were entitled to.

Everyone knew who played the system.

I work for a local authority cutecat, and during the 1990s I worked for a previous local authority where people used to take a lot of sick, I recognise what you are saying, but it's a different experience at the current LA where I work.

Currently, if people are off sick they get a phone call from their manager, and it's very closely monitored, and they dismiss people who have been there less than 2 years and take too much time off sick. One colleague had a leg injury then got MRSA - he was off sick for 7 months, and they harrassed him to go back to work, even though there were threats of a possible leg amputation.

Fortunately I've not had to take sick leave (1 day this rolling year), but another friend at work had a bad year with kidney infections and thought her days were numbered, have to go to a panel etc.

People calling her vile and evil make me laugh.

I'm not taking this personally. I am married to a man who can't work at all and we have faced loads of judgments from people . OP isn't moaning at people who are genuinely unwell and she isn't judging you, stop taking it personally, if you aren't one who is off sick when you aren't actually ill then the OP is not talking about you.

Like it or not, there are people who take the piss and they are the ones that make it harder for those with genuine illnesses to be taken seriously when they are off sick, not the OP who is moaning about people who are abusing the system.

Clearly going from other posts many others here knows exactly what the OP is talking about and have also experienced it.

OP knows they are taking the piss, she knows they know the system inside out and she knows what their attitudes are like. She doesn't need to have any qualifications to be able to listen to her colleagues.

It isn't the OP's fault that others have struggled to be taken seriously when they went off sick, stop taking it out on her and name calling.