The federal government has long had the dubious distinction of having one of the country’s sickest workforces with rising absenteeism rates due to illness and injury that are the largest in the public and private sectors.
Photograph by: Zina Seletskaya, Fotolia
OTTAWA — Canada’s public service starts a typical working day with more than 19,000 employees booked off the job on some kind of sick leave.
The figure circulating within the bureaucracy has finally forced the government to try and get at the root causes of absences and rising health and sick leave costs that are eating at the productivity and effectiveness of Canada’s largest employer.
The federal government has long had the dubious distinction of having one of the country’s sickest workforces with rising absenteeism rates due to illness and injury that are the largest in the public and private sectors.
Disability claims hit all-time highs over the past decade. The majority are mental health claims, which have doubled since 1991. Nearly half of those are for depression, which led to Ottawa being infamously dubbed the “depression capital of Canada.” Research has long established a relationship between depression and chronic illness, such as heart disease, diabetes and even cancer.
“Chronic illnesses will be the major public health issue of the next 25 years and the unions and management of the country’s biggest employer have a duty to understand how chronic conditions are managed, with their episodic recurrences and symptoms, so they have return-to-work procedures so someone with chronic illness is not penalized. It’s biggest health problem of the next quarter century,” said Bill Wilkerson, co-founder of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health.
At the same time, the pressure to slash spending is huge. Departments are managing daily absences of 19,000 people while trying to do their jobs and swallow budget cuts of $5.2 billion annually and 19,200 job losses by 2015. Some grumble whether they would be facing so many jobs cuts if steps had been taken earlier to get absenteeism due to illness and injury under control.
A Conference Board of Canada report said Canadian organizations have an annual absenteeism rate of 6.6 days lost per full-time employee, which costs an average of 2.6 per cent of payroll.
All public servants, whether they work for local, provincial, or federal agencies take more time off work than those in the private sector because of illness or injury but the federal public service tops the list.
Statistics Canada, which tracks workers absences, found federal employees, including crown corporations and other agencies, were absent 12.5 days a year — nearly twice the rate of the average employee in the private sector.
Many say the government doesn't have the tracking systems to have a firm handle on the cost of absenteeism but the amount of banked sick leave is said to be about $5 billion.
Sick leave in the public service climbed steadily over the past decade and accounts for one-third of the days bureaucrats take off every year. Total sick days taken per employee grew 26 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Sick leave without a doctors’ note — known as uncertified sick leave — grew 74 per cent over the decade from 4.1 days to 7.1 days.
It’s a costly productivity problem that has bedeviled management for years, but finally hit the radar several years ago when the government launched a $5.2-million disability management initiative to get a handle on the problem and how to fix it. That initiative, which included input from unions, recently took a dramatic turn when it was moved to Treasury Board’s pension and benefits sector to overhaul sick leave and the government’s 45-year-old disability insurance plans.
There are billions of dollars at stake and some say the government is convinced there are huge savings to be made with a new short-term disability plan to replace banked sick leave and disability case management system that puts more emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation and wellness to get the ill and injured back to work faster.
For unions, moving the initiative to what an internal Treasury Board letter called the “next phase” is a signal that sick leave, like severance pay, is going to be put on the table for negotiation. Sick leave is embedded in the collective agreement but the government, as legislator, can unilaterally change it.
Public servants get 15 days of sick leave a year and any unused days can be accumulated and carried over year after year. Critics argue it’s a system that rewards the healthy and penalizes the sick, especially those who may fall ill with only a few years of service under their belts.
Sick employees must exhaust their accumulated sick leave before they qualify for disability which covers 70 per cent of salary. The problem is the plan has a 13-week waiting period so anyone with less that 13 weeks of accumulated sick leave are off work without pay other than employment insurance sick benefits.
It’s estimated only one-third of employees have 13 weeks of banked sick leave to protect them from a precipitous drop in income if they get sick or injured.
On the other hand, a long-time public servant with more than 13 weeks of banked leave must use all of it before going on disability and getting any rehab services from the plan. That means they are left with no sick leave if they relapse.
Some workers abuse sick leave. Stories abound about long -time bureaucrats who have months of banked sick leave and suddenly produce a doctor’s note for stress or another ailment to use up leave before retiring.
Such a major overhaul opens a Pandora’s box for the unions. At Canada Post, where workers were booking off sick 14 days a year, unions unsuccessfully went on strike to salvage their sick leave. It was replaced with a new system of seven personal days that could be used for anything, including illness. After that, a short-term disability plan kicks in with up to 30 weeks off at 70 per cent pay.
Indications are the government is eyeing a similar model for the public service.
One union leader called sick leave is a “sacred cow” that unions are loathe to start dickering over, after losing severance pay in a public relations battle that portrayed bureaucrats as fat cats living off benefits that private sector workers could only dream of.
Unions are still stinging from a backlash from members over losing severance pay. Bargaining concessions for sick leave, another benefit unions won over 40 years ago, would be a political nightmare for them. Treasury Board officials have already privately warned some union leaders they want to re-negotiate sick leave.
“It would really have to be a positive offer for us to accept it,” said Claude Poirier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees. “If it’s like the severance deal which only solved the government’s problem, then it won’t work. But if they make a win-win offer, why not? We aren’t opposed to anything that comes from government. We are opposed to what’s bad for our members ..If the government doesn’t make an offer that makes sense we can’t convince members to exchange a dollar for two quarters and a dime.”
Wilkerson said accumulated sick leave is a big flaw of the existing system. It is considered “an entitlement earned” rather than aa safety net to help employees get back to work.
“Sick leave as it is has to go,” he said. “This should be about recovery, renewal, return to health and work and if that takes one week, six months or a year so be it, but looking at it as something you are owed or due under a contract, skews the entire system.”
“Sick leave is not a holiday or time that can be added to vacation. They are sick days to get well and better and should never been seen as a benefit or entitlement.”
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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