New research shows that council staff are taking twice as many sick days as private sector workers. The Telegraph has the story:
Local authority employees in the UK call in sick 10 days a year on average, at a cost of £667 million a year to taxpayers.
Their absence rate outstrips that in the rest of the public sector by almost a third, according to research by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.
It means a council worker is more likely to be off ill than someone doing a physically demanding job, such as construction, manufacturing or healthcare.
A steep rise in sick leave for mental health reasons, which now account for a quarter of all employee absences, is thought to be driving the figures. At the same time, councils are increasingly relying on bringing in agency staff, which now costs taxpayers about £2 billion a year. …
The think tank said the cost to the taxpayer of staff absences amounted to £3 million every working day, or £667 million annually. Of that, about £176 million was lost specifically to sick leave claimed as a result of mental health problems, a figure which had risen by £50 million since 2022–23.
Overall, this had added up to nine million lost working days each year – the equivalent of 41,302 full-time roles, the Taxpayers’ Alliance said.
Earlier this year, the Government made sick pay more generous as part of Angela Rayner’s reforms to workers’ rights legislation.
Staff can now claim statutory sick pay from their first day off work, rather than the fourth as previously.
Worth reading in full.
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If you’re allowed to do something, with no negative consequences, you are more likely to do it.
There are no negative consequences for salaried, public sector workers, who take regular sick leave.
Hourly paid people – shop workers – for instance, won’t take unjustified sick leave because they won’t be paid for the hours they don’t actually work.
Before I retired from nursing in the NHS, 18 years ago, dealing with the taking of sick leave had been incorporated into the disciplinary process. Many people ended up going off sick because they were exhausted from working on grossly understaffed wards. Of course, there were also those who took time “ off sick “:as an addition to their days off.
It reminds of the time I saw a couple of council employees working on the embankment of a new road. One would dig a little hole and his mate would then fill it in, they kept doing this every metre or so along the embankment. I asked them why they were digging holes then filling them in again. The reply was “It’s the job we were told to do, there’s normally another bloke who puts a tree in the hole but he called in sick today”.
An aquaintence of mine worked for the council, and because his contract said he could have a certain amount of paid sick days, that meant he was entitled to take them. And he made sure that he did. Mostly taken when he went abroad a couple of times a year on holiday.
He was somewhat confused when I called him a piss taking, theiving bastard, as he thought he was being quite clever.
I am wondering if these numbers include teachers? If so, that might disproportionately affect the totals because so many teachers are off with stress.
Well obviously, they’re not spending their own money.
Incentives have consequences.
I think part of the reason for this is the .age of the workers. The average age of council employees for Wirral Council is 55 years and 82% female. Dead men’s shoes must have is origins here.
How the council cannot see this as a major continuity risk is beyond me. This must be time to have major revamp of council employee contracts, evaluation of pension contributions and so on to improve productivity and and reduce employee costs.
Do you think that will happen? Not a chance. They will all hang on till they are forced to leave, and nepotism will ensure their shoes are filled with suitable relatives.
Sack the lot of them.
I am not sure I agree. The average age of farmers is very high but they are known for turning up every day. I suggest the reason is a lack of commitment combined with a lack of supervision; the two often go together.
The Government, pissing away your money at an incredible rate.