Sick pay scheme. The public and private sectors.

Xenophile

Minister Richard Bruton is defending very well against any proposal any proposal by his Government colleague Minister Joan Burton to introduce a scheme where the private sector employer must pay a higher contribution to the sick pay scheme.
In the case of Public servants all sick pay should be shown as an expense against the relevant Department
i.e. Gardai,..........Dept of Justice, Nurses..............Dept of Health...................Teachers............Dept of Education, etc.etc.
No sick pay for public servants, or people employed by semi state bodies or local authorities should be part of the Department of Social Protection budget. This would result in more control over the cost of sick pay costs. Comparisons leading to more transparency can only be useful as greater efficiency and more accountability will have to be part of the solution in pulling ourselves out of the economic mess we are in.

Bench mark sick pay costs against the likes of Google, Microsoft, Paypal, Paddy Power, Intel, Dunnes Stores, Tesco and the many well run small Irish companies and you will see just how much of the tax payers money is being misspent.
So Minister Burton with all due respect I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay and concentrate on where there is real room for improvement where the real problem exists.

Sleepy

TBH, I'd agree to a point: sick pay should be a cost of business, not an issue for the taxpayer to pick up the bill for via the Dept. of Social Welfare.

Absenteeism must surely be one of the easiest things to fire an employee for.

What I've generally experienced in salaried jobs is that while my contract states I've no entitlement to be paid for any time I miss due to illness etc. in my contract, it's never been deducted from my payslip: i.e. it's there purely as a "if you take the piss, we have you" clause. Sensible policy imo.

Godge

Xenophile wrote: »

Minister Richard Bruton is defending very well against any proposal any proposal by his Government colleague Minister Joan Burton to introduce a scheme where the private sector employer must pay a higher contribution to the sick pay scheme.
In the case of Public servants all sick pay should be shown as an expense against the relevant Department
i.e. Gardai,..........Dept of Justice, Nurses..............Dept of Health...................Teachers............Dept of Education, etc.etc.
No sick pay for public servants, or people employed by semi state bodies or local authorities should be part of the Department of Social Protection budget. This would result in more control over the cost of sick pay costs. Comparisons leading to more transparency can only be useful as greater efficiency and more accountability will have to be part of the solution in pulling ourselves out of the economic mess we are in.

Bench mark sick pay costs against the likes of Google, Microsoft, Paypal, Paddy Power, Intel, Dunnes Stores, Tesco and the many well run small Irish companies and you will see just how much of the tax payers money is being misspent.
So Minister Burton with all due respect I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay and concentrate on where there is real room for improvement where the real problem exists.

"I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay"

What exactly are you asking here? At the moment, the taxpayer, through disability allowance pays a large part of the cost of sick pay of private sector employees. Are you proposing that this stops resulting in a large saving to the taxpayer?

not yet

Godge wrote: »

"I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay"

What exactly are you asking here? At the moment, the taxpayer, through disability allowance pays a large part of the cost of sick pay of private sector employees. Are you proposing that this stops resulting in a large saving to the taxpayer?

What he is asking is very clear, It's an agdena set out by ISME and IBEC to scapegoat the PS.

Mellio

Godge wrote: »

"I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay"

What exactly are you asking here? At the moment, the taxpayer, through disability allowance pays a large part of the cost of sick pay of private sector employees. Are you proposing that this stops resulting in a large saving to the taxpayer?

So everyone on Disability Allowance is from the private sector and is employed, I think you will find that the majority of people on Disability Allowance are unemployed and have been for a long time due to there disability to work whether in the private or public sector.

I think a little harsh also to stop Sick Pay all together for Public Sector/Semi State Workers but I would be interested to see how much money is paid out for Sick Pay and after just looking looks like €500M per annum.

I do also beleive most companies in the private sector who do offer sick pay whether it be directly or indrectly cover it themselves not the state. Its a big expense for a lot of companies and they get nothing in return for it.

I like the idea of the sick pay being assigned to each public sector field so it stands out where sick pay is being abused more and each department can review it more clearly instead of labelling every PS department the same.

spank_inferno

Isn't the Soclai Welfare illness payment very modest though?

Like €15 / €18 per day ?

Stheno

Mellio wrote: »

I do also beleive most companies in the private sector who do offer sick pay whether it be directly or indrectly cover it themselves not the state. Its a big expense for a lot of companies and they get nothing in return for it.

.

Pretty much every company I worked for who paid additional sick leave pay on top of the state illness benefits required you to sign over the state illness benefit, or deducted it from your pay to reduce the cost to them of providing sick leave pay

spank_inferno wrote: »

Isn't the Soclai Welfare illness payment very modest though?

Like €15 / €18 per day ?

Rates are:
Average weekly earnings Personal rate Qualified adult rate
€300 or more €188 €124.80
€220 - €299.99 €147.30 €80.90
€150 - €219.99 €121.40 €80.90
less than €150 €84.50 €80.90

So just under €38 per day based on a five day week if you earn €300 per week or above for an individual, then an additional €25 approx. if you have a dependant adult.

eigrod

Sleepy wrote: »

Absenteeism must surely be one of the easiest things to fire an employee for.

Totally disagree. It's probably the hardest. Where illness is properly certified by GPs (and often then linked to disability) it's a hugely difficult area in employment law (Google it).

It's a long and cumbersome route that will often spend years in Equality Tribunals and/or Employment Appeals Tribunals and can be extremely expensive for the employer.

spank_inferno

Stheno wrote: »

So just under €38 per day based on a five day week if you earn €300 per week or above.

Aah... thanks for that.

I wonder do many in the private sector get their sick days covered by the employer?

I've never worked for a company that paid for sick days.
Even compassionate / emergency leave is unpaid.

So it's nice in principle but for many, once the employer is under no obligation to have sick pay in the first place it doesn't matter a jot.

Stheno

spank_inferno wrote: »

Aah... thanks for that.

I wonder do many in the private sector get their sick days covered by the employer?

I've never worked for a company that paid for sick days.
Even compassionate / emergency leave is unpaid.

So it's nice in principle but for many, once the employer is under no obligation to have sick pay in the first place it doesn't matter a jot.

Out of eight companies, only one I've worked in didn't pay sick leave.
One was a semi state, and they didn't pay sick leave for the first six months.

Every other paid sick leave, usually with a limit of six months, some had long term illness benefit.

Emergency/compassionate leave was paid in all eight.
They ranged from small companies of less than 100 employees to multinationals.

Mellio

spank_inferno wrote: »

Aah... thanks for that.

I wonder do many in the private sector get their sick days covered by the employer?

I've never worked for a company that paid for sick days.
Even compassionate / emergency leave is unpaid.

So it's nice in principle but for many, once the employer is under no obligation to have sick pay in the first place it doesn't matter a jot.

I have always had sick pay in my job but have never really abused it. It does get abused I can definitely say that.

I think more and more buisinesses are vearing away from it because of the cost but really depends what field of industry your in.

As mentioned above the state portion normally goes back to the employer if they cover the full wage but is only a small % v the pay they actually cover.

JustinDee

Why is the average amount of sick leave taken by Public Sector workers almost twice that of the Private sector, according to IBEC and the Comptroller and Auditor General?

In addition, why are the people covered in these surveys most likely to be sick on Mondays or Fridays, in comparison to the other three days?

Sleepy

My point was that if one was to instigate a policy that ALL sickness leave must be certified at the employee's own cost and a contractual clause as used in many places that they can send you to a doctor of their own choosing for a second opinion you'll either manage out those that want to work in an environment where they can ring in with a hangover on a Monday or at least dissuade repeat offences (having to pay for the sick cert each time you want a duvet day would motivate most into giving up the practice).

Someone failing to produce a valid sick cert for these days would then be very easy to fire.

Now, where an organisation has no policy on extended sick leave that terminates the contract after a set period (as we see with many large organisations both public and private from my experiences), there's little that can be done in relation to long-term absences or high absenteeism caused by regular treatment related to a disability etc..

Head The Wall

eigrod wrote: »

Totally disagree. It's probably the hardest. Where illness is properly certified by GPs (and often then linked to disability) it's a hugely difficult area in employment law (Google it).

It's a long and cumbersome route that will often spend years in Equality Tribunals and/or Employment Appeals Tribunals and can be extremely expensive for the employer.

I think Sleepy was hinting more at people taking the piss with days off here and there, a lot of Fridays and Mondays etc. There is this myth that "some" PS staff view the number of paid sick days they are entitled to as extra holidays - this is an issue that definitely needs tackling.

There is also talk of people ringing in sick so their colleagues get overtime to cover for them.

Sleepy

JustinDee wrote: »

Why is the average amount of sick leave taken by Public Sector workers almost twice that of the Private sector, according to IBEC and the Comptroller and Auditor General?

Large generalisation warning: because women and those with disabilities are more likely to seek employment in the public sector.

Head The Wall wrote: »

I think Sleepy was hinting more at people taking the piss with days off here and there, a lot of Fridays and Mondays etc. There is this myth that "some" PS staff view the number of paid sick days they are entitled to as extra holidays - this is an issue that definitely needs tackling.

There is also talk of people ringing in sick so their colleagues get overtime to cover for them.

I'd have anecdotal experience of both of those scenarios happening (including one of a girl who'd spent her entire career to that point in the PS asking "how many sick days do we get?" during an interview...) They're not exclusive to the PS, but almost certainly more prevalent due to stronger levels of union protection.

Stheno

JustinDee wrote: »

Why is the average amount of sick leave taken by Public Sector workers almost twice that of the Private sector, according to IBEC and the Comptroller and Auditor General?

In addition, why are the people covered in these surveys most likely to be sick on Mondays or Fridays, in comparison to the other three days?

Sleepy wrote: »

Large generalisation warning: because women and those with disabilities are more likely to seek employment in the public sector.

Also wasn't there some discussion in one of the threads a while back that due to the amount of PS workers who work on a 24/7 basis, that they don't count just M-F but M-S, sometimes erroneously?

Head The Wall

Sleepy wrote: »

Large generalisation: because women and those with disabilities are more likely to seek employment in the public sector.

Is there ever going to be a good or efficient PS if that's who is being recruited?

That's a joke obviously.

I still don't understand why they can't fix their sick day accounting system, maybe the current system obfuscates the figures because of the Fri-Mon numbers. If they counted the number of sick days properly they may look a lot worse.

You would think that if they could make the numbers look better by doing this it would be done. By leaving it the other way it looks like they are hiding something.

Sleepy

As someone who's spent a significant part of the last year developing data services for reporting on employee absence etc, if they were counting them erroneously, they were incompetent.

In a typical 9-5 position one can generally calculate the number of days absence involved by getting the number of days between the start-date and end-date of the absence (as it will generally be recorded in a HR system) and deducting the number of Saturdays, Sundays (and depending on how the organisation records absence) public holidays that occurred in that time-frame.

When dealing with non-standard 9-5, Mon-Friday roles (or simply if you want more accuracy) you join the absence to the person's recorded work-schedule and calculate the absence as the number of hours/days that the person was scheduled to be in work for during that time period. Other factors such as Full Time Equivalences and / or employees that hold multiple roles/positions within a firm can have to be factored for as well but trust me, if I can do it accurately, it's not quantum physics. It's simple logic and arithmetic.

Chris_5339762

Stheno wrote: »

Also wasn't there some discussion in one of the threads a while back that due to the amount of PS workers who work on a 24/7 basis, that they don't count just M-F but M-S, sometimes erroneously?

Fri - Mon is taken as four sick days, not two. That would skew the figures completely.

Sleepy

It should be entered in the system as such, but should not be reported as such. (Unless one is reporting metrics such as Bradford Factor etc.)

spank_inferno

spank_inferno wrote: »

I've never worked for a company that paid for sick days.
Even compassionate / emergency leave is unpaid.

Come off it.

I've worked private sector all my life (over 20 years, including for two of the companies listed in the OP) and NEVER worked for a company that didn't pay sick leave. Claiming anything from the government has never come up, maybe they do that behind the scenes, I don't know.

Usual policy is one day off is fine, once it gets to 3 consecutive days then a sick note is expected. Always full pay unless it goes on for months.

The only thing your email convinces me of is that you've never worked in the private sector.

Head The Wall

This has been highlighted before as one of the reasons why the overall sick day ratio is twice what it is in the private sector. I think it's a decoy figure as the figures are probably as bad if not worse as reported.

Head The Wall

Deleted User wrote: »

Come off it.

I've worked private sector all my life (over 20 years, including for two of the companies listed in the OP) and NEVER worked for a company that didn't pay sick leave. Claiming anything from the government has never come up, maybe they do that behind the scenes, I don't know.

Usual policy is one day off is fine, once it gets to 3 consecutive days then a sick note is expected. Always full pay unless it goes on for months.

The only thing your email convinces me of is that you've never worked in the private sector.

Obviously this depends on the company and the role. Professional roles will often pay the first three days and it's social rates after that. This is of course in relation to short term sick. I have worked in Generic factory worker roles before and they didn't pay if you were off sick.

Most companies I have worked for had long term systems in place usually up to six months pay so that does seem to be pretty standard. it's the days off for flu's and viruses etc that seem to cart company by company and role by role.

Godge

Sleepy wrote: »

As someone who's spent a significant part of the last year developing data services for reporting on employee absence etc, if they were counting them erroneously, they were incompetent.

In a typical 9-5 position one can generally calculate the number of days absence involved by getting the number of days between the start-date and end-date of the absence (as it will generally be recorded in a HR system) and deducting the number of Saturdays, Sundays (and depending on how the organisation records absence) public holidays that occurred in that time-frame.

When dealing with non-standard 9-5, Mon-Friday roles (or simply if you want more accuracy) you join the absence to the person's recorded work-schedule and calculate the absence as the number of hours/days that the person was scheduled to be in work for during that time period. Other factors such as Full Time Equivalences and / or employees that hold multiple roles/positions within a firm can have to be factored for as well but trust me, if I can do it accurately, it's not quantum physics. It's simple logic and arithmetic.

Well, if you were developing data services for recording absences, I hope you weren't planning to sell the systems to the public service.

If a clerical officer takes sick leave on a Friday and on the following Monday, it counts as four days sick leave because Saturday and Sunday are included even though they are employed on a 5-day week and only missed two days. At the casual and low-level sick leave that distorts the statistics.

If a clerical officer has cancer and misses a year, they get six months full pay and six months half-pay. If they worked in the private sector they might get three months paid. As the statistics only count paid sick days, those types of absences also distort the statistics.

As always, statistics only tell part of the story and there is always someone who uses them for their own twisted purpose (in this case IBEC).

The reality is we don't know whether the public sector is more likely to take sick days than the private sector because the statistics do not compare like with like. The public sector haters might well be right but they could also be very wrong.

Idbatterim

I dont see why the employer should pay it, the employer and employee are paying PRSI. Also it is the employer who is being inconvenienced and may lose out on sales etc or have to get someone else to do over time etc... It also given an incentive to take the piss!

Head The Wall

Chances are that they are using figures that will show them in the best light.

mitosis

The simple solution is to stop collecting PRSI and let employees only be paid if they work, or at the discretion of an employer if unavailable for work. If I am forced to pay absentees I will have to reduce pay scales to account, or employ on a rolling weekly contract. Paying six weeks salary to someone who doesn't produce will put me out of business.

Sleepy

Why would you hope that out of interest Godge? Actually, most of what I've been working on has been for the UK public sector but others in my company have done identical services for Irish companies and PS bodies (albeit on different systems).

Almost every HR system I've worked with records absences along the lines of [Employee_ID],[Absence_Type],[Absence_Sub_Type],[Description],[Date_From],[Date_To],[Time_From],[Time_To]. Thus, the clerical officer in your example would enter their sick leave as 4 days absence (Friday to Monday).

Reporting from this, would obviously skew the figures if you simply added up all the DateDiff's of the absence lines. While the staff member was absent for 4 days, as only two of those days were working days, only 2 days absence should be reported in any report providing number of days absence. Were they a part-timer/flexi-timer etc., only those hours they were rostered to work for should be included so that 2 days could easily become 1 or 1.5 days actual absence (or could become 1 days absence in Dept A and 1 day's absence in Dept B if they held multiple roles as many do in large organisations).

That's not to say the overall length of the absence wouldn't usually be listed on the same report, or that it's not a useful figure. Metrics like the (rather controversial but still widespread) Bradford Factor I mentioned above (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Factor), often use different absence figures in conjunction with each other to highlight problems such as departments suffering from numerous short absences (i.e. habitual absenteeism) by factoring these in such a way that the number of absence periods in a year is used to weight each employee's or departments total number of absence days. It's a blunt instrument but used correctly, it can be very useful.

Incidentally, one of the most requested outputs we're asked for from HR systems is a "Mondays and Fridays report" to highlight the employees/managers/departments most frequently suffering from "long weekend-itus"

Head The Wall

That would be fine if PRSI was only used to cover sick pay, it doesn't so your point is not applicable.

Xenophile

JustinDee wrote: »

Why is the average amount of sick leave taken by Public Sector workers almost twice that of the Private sector, according to IBEC and the Comptroller and Auditor General?

In addition, why are the people covered in these surveys most likely to be sick on Mondays or Fridays, in comparison to the other three days?

Such abuse of sick pay could not be tolerated in the private sector.

For those seeking clarification of the opening post, my suggestion is that the cost of sick pay be shown separately in each of the relevant Govt. Depts, nothing more than that.

ballyharpat

I don't get sick pay if I'm off, I could probably use my stamps, have never had to, but I had to take two days sick last year and never got paid, I work for a company with about 70 full time and 20 part time staff.

Scortho

Sleepy wrote: »

My point was that if one was to instigate a policy that ALL sickness leave must be certified at the employee's own cost and a contractual clause as used in many places that they can send you to a doctor of their own choosing for a second opinion you'll either manage out those that want to work in an environment where they can ring in with a hangover on a Monday or at least dissuade repeat offences (having to pay for the sick cert each time you want a duvet day would motivate most into giving up the practice).

Someone failing to produce a valid sick cert for these days would then be very easy to fire.

Now, where an organisation has no policy on extended sick leave that terminates the contract after a set period (as we see with many large organisations both public and private from my experiences), there's little that can be done in relation to long-term absences or high absenteeism caused by regular treatment related to a disability etc..

Our company policy (3000 employees in Ireland) has a policy that sick pay isnt paid until the 3rd day, from which it must be certified. Then after two weeks the contractual clause that you mentioned kicks in and you have to get a second opinion from their GP.
Its pretty fair in my opinion. At least that way we know that we're covered if we go sick for longer than 3 days but if its someone taking the mick its a loss of a days wage for them letting us down.
As a result people rarely go sick unless its genuine! We still bad mouth them though:D

Deise Vu

ballyharpat wrote: »

I don't get sick pay if I'm off, I could probably use my stamps, have never had to, but I had to take two days sick last year and never got paid, I work for a company with about 70 full time and 20 part time staff.

Thank God for that, I've been working for 34 years in Companies ranging from 35 workers to 1,300 and I've never even heard of a sick scheme apart from one company where the electricians and fitters had their own self-financed scheme. As you would expect from fitters and electricians, that one didn't last too long either before the rows started. I cannot understand how so many of the posters here seem to think they are standard unless they are referring to the Disability Scheme.

On balance I think the proposal to make employers responsible for the first 4 weeks of the disability scheme is actually a good idea providing there were then some redundancies on the administrative side of the dept of social welfare.

As it is, nothing is paid for the first three days so Friday, Monday syndrome would not be encouraged and if employees knew there was a cost to the employer there probably would be some extra pressure to avoid any absenteeism. It would completely eliminate all short-term claims in the Department and it would be easy to administer for the employer (at a maximum cost of about €658 for an employee out for at least a month). As there are very few workers, in my experience, who are out for this length of time a small reduction in employers PRSI would finance the extra cost.

frankosw

Xenophile wrote: »

Minister Richard Bruton is defending very well against any proposal any proposal by his Government colleague Minister Joan Burton to introduce a scheme where the private sector employer must pay a higher contribution to the sick pay scheme.
In the case of Public servants all sick pay should be shown as an expense against the relevant Department
i.e. Gardai,..........Dept of Justice, Nurses..............Dept of Health...................Teachers............Dept of Education, etc.etc.
No sick pay for public servants, or people employed by semi state bodies or local authorities should be part of the Department of Social Protection budget. This would result in more control over the cost of sick pay costs. Comparisons leading to more transparency can only be useful as greater efficiency and more accountability will have to be part of the solution in pulling ourselves out of the economic mess we are in.

Bench mark sick pay costs against the likes of Google, Microsoft, Paypal, Paddy Power, Intel, Dunnes Stores, Tesco and the many well run small Irish companies and you will see just how much of the tax payers money is being misspent.
So Minister Burton with all due respect I ask you to leave the private sector alone to manage their sick pay and concentrate on where there is real room for improvement where the real problem exists.

yet another economic expert speaks out!:rolleyes:

Head The Wall

frankosw wrote: »

yet another economic expert speaks out!:rolleyes:

He's not saying there should be no sick pay but just that sick pay related costs come directly from the relevant dept's budget.

HSE employee's who suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage after 24 weeks are still entitled to 26 weeks maternity leave. Why is this the case, if a living child died they would only be entitled to 3 days?

Tigger

Head The Wall wrote: »

He's not saying there should be no sick pay but just that sick pay related costs come directly from the relevant dept's budget.

HSE employee's who suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage after 24 weeks are still entitled to 26 weeks maternity leave. Why is this the case, if a living child died they would only be entitled to 3 days?

Only living things can die
If while on maternity pea the child dies what happens

frankosw

Head The Wall wrote: »

He's not saying there should be no sick pay but just that sick pay related costs come directly from the relevant dept's budget.

HSE employee's who suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage after 24 weeks are still entitled to 26 weeks maternity leave. Why is this the case, if a living child died they would only be entitled to 3 days?

And how is that relevant to a forum called Irish Economy??

A few distraught mothers getting time off work arent going to make an difference to the amount of money we have to pay the bondholders.

Stheno

frankosw wrote: »

And how is that relevant to a forum called Irish Economy??

A few distraught mothers getting time off work arent going to make an difference to the amount of money we have to pay the bondholders.

It's symptomatic of the malaise that is the policies of the HSE.
On any given day they have 5000 staff out sick.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0814/1224322124523.html

frankosw

Stheno wrote: »

It's symptomatic of the malaise that is the policies of the HSE.
On any given day they have 5000 staff out sick.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/health/2012/0814/1224322124523.html

Is it in any way connected with the fact that they're dealing with sick members of the public who transmit sicknesses to them?

Stheno

frankosw wrote: »

Is it in any way connected with the fact that they're dealing with sick members of the public who transmit sicknesses to them?

Someone earlier posted that people who work in those sort of environments build up stronger immune systems, so I suspect not.

And I doubt all 5000 are frontline staff?

frankosw

Stheno wrote: »

Someone earlier posted that people who work in those sort of environments build up stronger immune systems, so I suspect not.?

You suspect not?

Stheno wrote: »

And I doubt all 5000 are frontline staff?

You doubt it do you?

That just about sums up the sort of stuff thats allowed to be spouted on this forum..a litany of half-truths,lies and sneaky suspicions with a fair smattering of " a bloke i know once told me".

srsly78

Stheno wrote: »

Someone earlier posted that people who work in those sort of environments build up stronger immune systems, so I suspect not.

And I doubt all 5000 are frontline staff?

In the private sector self-employed contractors also seem to have very strong immune systems, they never get sick! Someone should do a medical investigation into this phenomenon...

Stheno

frankosw wrote: »

You suspect not?



You doubt it do you?

That just about sums up the sort of stuff thats allowed to be spouted on this forum..a litany of half-truths,lies and sneaky suspicions with a fair smattering of " a bloke i know once told me".

Eh, I'm perfectly entitled to give my opinion? No need for the tantrum. Were I to state something as fact which is only my opinion, you'd probably be even more annoyed.

I posted the fact of 5000 staff on sick leave every day and referenced it, then offered my opinion when you asked a question as there is nothing factually referencing a breakdown of which types of staff go sick in the HSE

frankosw

srsly78 wrote: »

In the private sector self-employed contractors also seem to have very strong immune systems, they never get sick!

Its true.

I worked in Dunnes and nobody was *ever* out sick..especially not on mondays,fridays or after gigs and festivals...i never saw warehouse staff smoking hash on the premises or being sent home early because they were still drunk from the night before.

In addition i never once heard of anybody going off sick for three months with a "back problem" caused by a fall that nobody saw happening and then suing the company for 45k whilst still getting paid.

Stheno

srsly78 wrote: »

In the private sector self-employed contractors also seem to have very strong immune systems, they never get sick! Someone should do a medical investigation into this phenomenon...

I suffered from this in the past.

It's called "If I don't go into work, I'll lose a lot of money" syndrome.

frankosw

Stheno wrote: »

I suffered from this in the past.

It's called "If I don't go into work, I'll lose a lot of money" syndrome.

Ah you see teh PS pay you indefinatley no matter how long you're out sick..its free money you see.

They certainly dont reduce your pay by half if you're incapaciated or cut your pay to nothing iof you have the cheek to suffer a debillitatiing stroke like a guy i work with.

I suppose you think he shouldnt have gotten the disability pension for being paralysed down one side of his body?

Maybe he was only putting it on?

Stheno

frankosw wrote: »

Ah you see teh PS pay you indefinatley no matter how long you're out sick..its free money you see.

They certainly dont reduce your pay by half if you're incapaciated or cut your pay to nothing iof you have the cheek to suffer a debillitatiing stroke like a guy i work with.

I suppose you think he shouldnt have gotten the disability pension for being paralysed down one side of his body?

Maybe he was only putting it on?

I've no idea who you are talking about.

Please don't bother replying as I've used the magic ignore button so I no longer have to read your posts.

frankosw

Stheno wrote: »

I've no idea who you are talking about.

Please don't bother replying as I've used the magic ignore button so I no longer have to read your posts.

Doesnt suit you to read them eh?


Especially as you seem to be implying everybody in the PS is a scammer and routinely goes sick when there's nothing wrong with them.

Lumbo

Head The Wall wrote: »

HSE employee's who suffer a stillbirth or miscarriage after 24 weeks are still entitled to 26 weeks maternity leave. Why is this the case, if a living child died they would only be entitled to 3 days?

That's actually an entitlement available to all women who have suffered a stillbirth or miscarriage but don't let that get in the way of your misinformed rants.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/social_welfare_payments_to_families_and_children/maternity_benefit.html

Stillbirths and miscarriages If you have a stillbirth or miscarriage anytime after the 24th week of pregnancy (i.e from the beginning of the 25th week) you are entitled to 26 weeks maternity leave. You are also entitled to 26 weeks Maternity Benefit provided you satisfy the social insurance (PRSI) requirements.
To apply for Maternity Benefit following a stillbirth, you need to send a letter from your doctor with the Maternity Benefit application form, confirming the expected date of birth, the actual date of birth and the number of weeks of pregnancy.

Vizzy

Lumbo wrote: »

That's actually an entitlement available to all women who have suffered a stillbirth or miscarriage but don't let that get in the way of your misinformed rants.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/social_welfare_payments_to_families_and_children/maternity_benefit.html[/QUOTE]

And even better Head the Wall it applies in the UK too so you don't even have to come home to get your entitlement when your child is stillborn.

ballyharpat

frankosw wrote: »

Is it in any way connected with the fact that they're dealing with sick members of the public who transmit sicknesses to them?

I work with sick members of the public all the time, there are no more sick days among our staff than among any other members of the private sector, I suppose parly it could be that we won't get paid and part of it could be that we do not want our colleagues to have to do extra work if we don't show, or pehaps be called in on their day off, and our overtime is paid at a regular rate, not time and a half or any other bonus..... now I would like to get paid more for overtime, but it would have to come from somewhere and in the case of the Public Sector, it comes from the tax-payer.