Canadian Public servants have 15 million days in banked sick leave

Interesting evidence that suggests less abuse of sick leave than previous government messaging justifying ending the banking of sick leave (i.e., many were keeping banked sick leave as insurance in case of catastrophic illnesses like cancer):

Canada’s public servants have socked away nearly 15 million days of unused sick leave, which would disappear under the Conservative government’s plan to introduce a new short-term disability plan.

That means the 195,330 people who are working today in the core public service — those for whom Treasury Board is the employer — have banked an average of 75 days, or 15 weeks, of sick leave to fall back on in the event of a prolonged illness.

The size of the sick leave bank was released by Treasury Board in response to an order paper question from Ottawa South Liberal MP David McGuinty. The statistics show a stockpile of 14.7 million days is what remains after nearly 63,000 people left the core public service over the past six years because they had retired, resigned, were laid off, fired or died.

… Public servants can’t cash out their sick leave when they leave government, so those credits disappear and are wiped off the books. With those departures, the amount of banked sick leave sick fell from 16 million days in 2008-09 to about 14.7 million days in 2013-14. There are about 261 working days in a year.

With the drop in the overall size of the sick leave bank, the average number of sick leave credits per employee also shifted. The average employee had a bank of 76 days in 2008-09, falling to 72 days when the 2012 budget cuts began but increasing to an average 75 days per worker for the past two years.

The large number of retirements and resignations over the past six years is probably older workers who had a stockpile of sick leave credits that would have been cancelled when they left the public service. Any new hires to replace them haven’t started to build their banks.

Many predicted there would be a run on the sick leave bank over the past couple of years from disgruntled employees deciding to use some of their sick leave credits before they lost them under the government’s new plan. But nothing in the data suggests that is happening in a significant way.

McGuinty said he was hoping the questions would shed some light on the state of the health of the public service and “what’s going on here” as the government negotiates with the 17 public service unions to reform the way sick leave and disability are managed.

Public servants have 15 million days in banked sick leave | Ottawa Citizen.