At the first of the year we started a new attendence policy. 1 - 30 minutes late was 1/2 an occurance. Over 30 minutes to calling in sick was a full occurance. You get two days per year when you’re allowed to call in sick and not get an occurance. More than 6 occurances and you’re fired. If you havea month with perfect attendence (not a minute late) you can erase 1/2 an occurance. We have 19 (or more depending on how long you’ve worked there) paid days off, but you have to preschedule it. If you come in sick and your boss says you can leave, there’s no occurance. I’ve stared coming in 15 minutes early, because you never know what the interstate will be like.
More than three straight sick days at my workplace is considered excessive. Then you need documentation.
There are also patterns, such as always being sick the Friday before or Tuesday after a holiday weekend, that I have to look out for.
I can cumulate up to 800 sick hours. I get 96 per year. So this year, I got paid back 50% for my extra sick time (65 hours) and pocketed a nice sum.
Now that I’m a boss, I have to pay attention to everyone’s time when they phone in sick. I have two people who do it a lot, although one has a good reason. The other is just a hypochondriac.
I don’t know if my company has a policy on what is “excessive”. I have 32 days off this year and damn if I am not going to use them. My boss uses his and so does his boss. You only get to carry over five so use them or lose them (kinda). Anything left over goes into this amorphous “bank” which is used 90% of the time by women going on maternity leave. Barring a medical miracle or tragedy, I doubt I would ever get to use anything in the bank.
Due to an emergency with my mom last year, I called my boss on a Sunday and said I needed a week to deal with that and there were no problems.
Bottom line is that I have to use common sense. They treat us like professionals and we owe the same in return. I can’t take vacation in December when everyone is trying to get deals closed before year end. I can’t take a last minute vacation unless my docket is clear. And I can’t take 32 days off in a row. Of course I also have to carry my blackberry and cell on vacations in case there are problems while I am away.
My last job there was no limit to sick days. If you were sick, you could just take off. However, there was one woman who abused it and was off 1 or twice a week. She was finally told that she had no more sick leave and if she took off she would not be paid.
In this job, you earn X hours each week towards sick leave. If you use it all, you have to take vacation, leave without pay or short term disability.
Heh - I just read my collective agreement. It says:
"c) The sick leave provision is for up to 130 (one hundred and thirty) days. "
That’s per year. It resets each January.
It goes on to add:
"iiv) Employees with more than five (5) years of employment, 100% of salary for first seventy (70) work days of illness, and 70% of salary for next sixty (60) work days of illness.
However, it does say that:
“an Employee is not elegible to recieve sick leave if injured during the commision of a crime.”
So, essentially I can be sick for half a year and still get paid. Assuming my sickness continues beyond that, I then get long term disability.
At my last job in NZ, I had 10 days per year, as did everyone else (sick days are a statutory right). However, in the last two years, managers were given discretion to allow employees an additional five days. Basically, people were so concerned about sick leave that they were not taking days off when they should, and were spreading colds/flu through the helpcentre. So managers would tell people to go/stay home. They also payed for flu vaccinations.
Here in the UK it is even better - two years ago I had a month off with a broken elbow, no problems. I know people who have had over six months off ill, and still draw a (reduced) salary. If you still can’t work, then you move on to disability pay.
Of course, I am now a contractor, so I have not had a day off sick for eighteen months. Going back permie has an attraction from that point of view. Or I pay for suitable income/illness cover.
alice, are you sure thats 130 days? If so, are they paid days? That seems ridiculously generous. We get 4 hours accrual of sick leave every 2 weeks with no limit on the balance, I’m at 2040 hours and counting. But no matter how much leave you have, if you’re going to be off more than a week then it’s appropriate and sometimes mandatory to bring in a doctor’s justification.
Yes, I’m positive. It is ridiculously generous. I also get 4 weeks of vacation a year, plus an additional 10 days at Christmas, plus 10 or 11 paid stat holidays a year, plus 2 paid personal days, plus a moving day, etc. etc. I only work a 35 hour work week, and I get to take classes for free.
So…when do you actually work? That sounds like you could take half the year off. I’ve got to assume that you would have difficulty getting your actual tasks done if you took all of it off, right?
On the other hand, I’ve never understood companies that give you a certain number of paid sick days and then bitched if you took them, though. 2 jobs ago, my employer was like that. You could take a sick day and get paid for it, but your billables would be down and you’d be screwed for that. It wasn’t worth it.
Well I didn’t say that I took 130 days of sick leave a year, I just said I could if I wanted to. While no one is indespensable, I’m pretty sure that less than a month would go by before my co-workers noticed that I was missing.
Does ANYONE have a job where they could be away for 6 months and not have stuff pile up?!?!?
Well, that was my question. I realized too late to edit that I made it sound like I thought you were out half the year, every year, and of course I don’t. I have to think there must be a history behind that particular bit of collective bargaining and that it’s on the books but in practice things would look different.
My office gives you 6 sick days a year. If you take more than 6, you start dipping into your vacation and personal days (15 of the former and two of the latter). If you use up all 23 days (or more depending on how long you’ve worked here - after 5 years it’s 28 days, 10 it’s 32, etc) then your last paycheck of the year is deducted pro rata for the overage. As that paycheck coincides with the yearly bonus check, it’s not much of a sting.
There are people who call in every Monday morning.
Not that much. Assuming John Q. Sickguy gets something really rotten wrong with him - like cancer for instance. The way the policy works is that (assuming he has 5 years of employment) the first 70 work days of his absence are considered sick leave and he gets paid 100% of his salary. Then the next 60 work days of absence are considered sick leave and he gets 70% of his salary without any effort on his part. After that (about 6 months) if he continues to be ill he must apply for long term disability benefits - I don’t actually know what long term disablity pays - I believe that it’s also 70% of salary however I think benefits may be slightly different.
Obviously not that many people come down with something that requires them to be off work for 6 months. If I got sick and needed that much time off, I would be expected to contact my boss and let him know. If I was going to be out for more than about a week, a temporary person would be brought in. If I was going to be gone for more than 6 months, my position would be advertised and a replacement would be hired (assuming the absence wasn’t for pregnancy - then I get one year paid leave). If after the 6 months were up I had a miraculous recovery, the University gaurantees me a position at the same level as my previous one. FWIW, I believe that you still accrue seniority while on sick leave, but not long term disability.
It’s actually not that odd. I get 10 sick days a year. If I don’t use them , they get banked. Right now I have about 21 weeks of sick leave on the books. If I get sick, and use all of that up, I’m eligible for sick leave at half pay ( I think it’s 2 weeks for every year I’ve worked). I could potentially be out for a year and get paid for the whole thing. But to use that kind of sick leave, I have to follow different rules than I do for calling in sick a day or two here and there. More than 3 days, my supervisor can require a doctor’s note. If I have a pattern of calling in sick a day or two every week, my supervisor can require a doctor’s note. After 2 weeks, personnel requires a doctor’s note. After a month, they require regular medical updates from the doctor. I suspect that Alice’s employer has some sort of rule which prevents a person from just calling in sick a day here and a day there until it adds up to 40 or 50 days.
Although I imagine a boss would start to complain if a person was away that much. That’s one day a week. Not that a bosses complaints amout to much - they really have to work to get rid of people around these parts.
What’s an “unexcused absence”? You just don’t show up for work and never explain what happened?
Shit, I’d fire someone for doing that twice. Honestly, if you call in once every two weeks, it’s time to produce a note from a doctor or find another place to work.
I get five sick days a year at full pay, 15 at .75 pay, and they accumulate forever. I must have a fair amount of full pay sick time saved up by now. I’m not averse to using it if I’m sick (one time I called in sick because I’d been up until 6 AM playing SSX Tricky and I was having trouble seeing) but really, how often do you get THAT sick? I get paid for it when I leave, too.
