Calling In Sick?

[AP Tech]

Here at U for me there has always been a CYA policy in place. I can count on one hand when time were good the number of times I had to call in sick and I always had a note from the doctor and presented it only if they requested. As for the phone calls to your residence, it is real simple, with caller ID, DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE!!!! The game was played for years by flight crews that were on reserve...look at the phone and laugh.....

 

[usairrwe]

another falsehood...... we do not have PDO days..at one point we did.... but not anymore......

the sick calls for CWA (agents) has not dimenished.... its just we are comming in sick because we cannot afford to use sick time and then if we do use it the station managers go biserk and the levels starts....

 

[cavalier]

Captain Captain assumes the worst in people and places punitive policies in action.

Ok fine.

What about accountability for executives that don't perform, tell lies, mislead and deceive, what should we do about that, or are they exempt?

Abuse you say, yes there is some, but why? Why would that happen? We all know why, it starts at the top and punitive policies will only inflame the situation not calm it.

 

[javaboy]

hypothetical situation :

1.call in sick day 1
2.day 2 you are notified u need a note
3.you call your primary care provider to ask for appt.
4. he/she booked up and taking long holiday weekend 1st open is tues after holiday
5.since your not supposed to work until note is provided you must now call in sick again.
6.tues arrives doc says you're not sick, you say no not today but last week i wasn't so hot.

what should be done? afterall the reason for the note was POLICY so was the 2nd sick call .

just wondering.
does this raise BP? stress? doc might say yeep you're stressed alright take 6months off now you got 0 productivity for 180days

 

[700UW]

CWA rerpesetned employees have Paid Days Off (PDO's), which has signficnatly reduced sick abuse.
Regards,
USA320Pilot

Wrong, CWA employees have sick time, not PDO's, that went out in the late 90's.

 

[openview]

Airlineorphan

I don't pretent to have a stronger argument, not the reason I joined this forum and yes my comments can be sarcastic. Just trying to present some accurate information when I can. I have been a f/a and in mgmt. I've always said its unfortunate that all employees didn't get to see information I had access to. The numbers, the occurances, the reasons, the costs associated with an area like sick calls. Granted there are exceptions like long term illness and legitimate illness. I even think the company wouldn't care or concern themselves about the occasion bogus sick call once or twice a year for most employees, but it much more than that. Contract language that encourages you to pick up a high time 4 days for any sick call-even if your only sick one day. Language that reads 17 straight day off or back-to-backsick is one occurance as long as their concecutive. "Sickness" spikes each and every holiday and weekend. It breeds abuse and you the whole company pay for this in the long run.

The f/a contract has grown to a one inch thick book full of such clauses. Many sucessful companies and industries operate and make money with nothing more that a couple of pages of HR rules and benifits for the employees as guidelines. I think its lost sight of the goods benefits and pure protections fought for, and dilutes its strengh fighting for these issues that serve the bottom 20% of the sponges working the system.

 

[Ch. 12]

Abuse you say, yes there is some, but why? Why would that happen? We all know why, it starts at the top and punitive policies will only inflame the situation not calm it.

You say it starts at the top, but from all that I can see here, it starts at the top, bottom, and middle and spreads like a virus. The whole issue is to behave morally and maturely like so many others do every single day and don't call in sick if you are not sick.

I have to agree that a PTO policy is the best way. And to get rid of silly language such as you get paid for answering the phone. Heck...forget caller ID...I want a full day's sick pay PLUS a half day's "absurd pay for receiving phone call" pay. Again...I say before accusing mgmt...look in the mirror.

And punitive policies will only inflame the issue?! C'mon...you know as well as I that anything (even nothing) will only inflame the issue. You've chosen to remain jaded no matter what changes occur to mgmt or operations. That doesn't mean that you should cost YOUR company money that it has little of just b/c you don't feel like going to work and would like a few extra days tacked onto a long holiday weekend.

 

[ClueByFour]

I also work in a nonunion shop that has the "get paid upon phone ringing" type stuff.

The reason is to prohibit abusing the on call systems.

 

[pitguy]

Two things-

1- It is not 4.5 hours of pay. It is 4 hours at the time and a half rate. Hence the meaning would be 4 x 1.5 = 6 hours of pay. So it is 6 hours of pay and not 4 hours.

2- As past practice I have always known it to be the company had to ask you when you called in sick to ask for a doctor's note. If not they could not ask for one. Once you returned to work you should be considered better and fit for duty so no need to see a doctor since you were not ill at that point. How would the doctor verify that you were sick before when you are not sick now?

I have known people who have not been sick for over five years and have called in and told they have to bring in a doctor's note. To me this is stupid and a waste of insurance money and peoples time. I can assure you in Maintenance there are close eyes kept on sick time.

 

[bikingjw]

Help me here. I was under the impression that sick days per year was arrived at through contract negotiations. This is for IAM contracts. When the comp.and the union negotiators meet, a dollar amount is given to be allocated to the employee for each hour of employment. In this amount, pay per hour, vacation ,holiday pay,and insurance are all figured in to come up with total burden cost (comp. wording not mine). In this dollar amount, sick leave is figured in to the cost per employee just as vacations,holidays insuranse,ect. ect. In other words the employee is paying for it already via the contract. If the comp. wants to eliminate sick leave then the money that was allocated for said sick leave should go back into the paycheck as it was part of the total negotiated amount agreed to by BOTH PARTYS!!!
And why doesn't the company just look around to see how to make sick leave abuse disappear. How do other companys do it?? Why reinvent the wheel?? What system works best for others might just work for us right?? And without the need of boxing gloves. Ask some of the ex PSA folks how they did it. I believe you would find their sick leave abuse was much lower than US, much lower. WHY? Why do we make everything so hard in these already trying times. Is US that stupid, or could there be some other motives at work here....

 

[LaBradford22]

Help me here. I was under the impression that sick days per year was arrived at through contract negotiations. This is for IAM contracts. When the comp.and the union negotiators meet, a dollar amount is given to be allocated to the employee for each hour of employment. In this amount, pay per hour, vacation ,holiday pay,and insurance are all figured in to come up with total burden cost (comp. wording not mine). In this dollar amount, sick leave is figured in to the cost per employee just as vacations,holidays insuranse,ect. ect. In other words the employee is paying for it already via the contract. If the comp. wants to eliminate sick leave then the money that was allocated for said sick leave should go back into the paycheck as it was part of the total negotiated amount agreed to by BOTH PARTYS!!!

Jeepers creepers, you guys are always negotiating. Yes, it is true, there is a paid sick bank accrual that employees receive, and the amount of that accrual is contractually defined and agreed upon by both parties.

Now, step away from the negotiating table for a moment. Calling in sick when you are not actually sick is an abuse of the sick policy. That's true in any job at any company, Union or non-Union.

Maybe a PTO bank is the best way to go - lump sick and vacation time together. At the end of the year, allow some PTO time to be paid in cash, carried to the next year, made into a 401k contribution, etc. Give the employees who are responsible adults and don't abuse the sick policy a reward, and give the employees who have the maturity level of a 2-year-old who abuse the sick policy an incentive to grow up.

 

[czerny]

Legally, a company cannot ask for a sick note as it's considered confidential information between a health care provider and his/her patient. Non-airline family members have always been utterly shocked and puzzled by the fact that we airline crews are punished for using federally mandated sick hours. What's the point of having sick hrs if you can't use them? Calling in sick when you are not ill is dishonest but at the same time, a supervisor also has no right to ask for a doctor's note. He/she is not a trained medical professional and probably cannot understand what clamydia triachomoniasis is. Besides, the way my doctor writes anything, no one can read it except the pharmacist at the local CVS.

 

[700UW]

Legally a company can ask for a note, what they cant ask is what is the diagnosis.

 

[bikingjw]

LaBradford
Bingo, you get it!! The comp. has already figured sick leave in to the contract cost. Now it needs to figure how to stop the abuse. If I'm not mistaken, PSA(I didn't work for PSA only heard about it) paid the employee for unused sick leave at the end of the year. Bingo abuse went way down!! That cept the boss from calling overtime to replace lost workers, stoped the bickering, and saved money in the long run. How novel!!! What an easy fix!! A happy employee is a productive employee. Whats so hard about this to figure out.

 

[USA320Pilot]

Ch. 12:

Ch. 12 said: "This is a major ethical dilemma and the fact that nobody seems to see anything wrong with fraudulantly calling in sick is disturbing. Next time you blame mgmt for the failings of US, look in the mirror. There's plenty of blame to go around and sick policy abuse is a major cost that should be avoided if "entitled" people in the workforce were not morally bankrupt."

USA320Pilot comments. Agreed, if a person is sick they should stay home, otherwise they should report to work, period. For those who disagree, when is it o.k. to be unethical?

Respectfully,

USA320Pilot