Calling In Sick?

[stoopidute442]

My twisted view of the sick policy goes someting like this:

-An occurance is 1 second or one month, so if I am late for work (yes just one second will do) and will be charged an occurance why not make it a week?

-You can't be given a verbal warning until 4 occurances in one calender year.....wich could be 4 seconds or 4 months so why not take 4 months.

-If you call out sick (legitimate or not) every 3 months to the day you will never get a 5th occurance therefore you will never be disicplined.

-So even if I was so sick i had to break the "sick schedule" all I would have to do is skip the next scheduled sick call.

-The compnay/employee pay for health insurance....how hard is it to see the doctor and get a note just to ensure you will never have a problem with the sick policy.

Two points of summary
1. Earn 'em and Burn 'em
2. Don't bother to tell me I cn't spel....i kno!

 

[SpinDoc]

Actually, in defense of that policy (sort of), my firm has a policy for support staff that if they're asked to come in on the weekends or have to do some type of work at home (word processing, etc.) and it takes less than 4 hours to do, the support staffer is entitled to four hours pay.

And, interestingly, my company is union free.

ITrade:

Fair enough, but they are not getting paid 1.5
times pay for a 30 second phone call, are they?
There are ways around having a clause such
as this, but they often involve having honest
employees who don't their manager calling to
check on their well being so that overtime can be
scheduled to cover the sick employee. Purely and
simply, the clause was added to the union contract
to discourage managers from calling employees
at home when they are out sick because in some
cases, the employee is not sick at all, and
doesn't want to risk their charade being
discovered.

 

[mweiss]

Just out of curiosity, since many of you are hung up on the negotiation aspect of sick leave...

Do the contracts define acceptable uses of sick leave?

 

[cavalier]

Just out of curiosity, since many of you are hung up on the negotiation aspect of sick leave...

Do the contracts define acceptable uses of sick leave?

Ask management and they will ask the judge because the judge has become the final court of arbitration since the union breakers have arrived on the property.

As far as I know, they don't have a sick or pain meter to gage ones level of need to take sick time. I guess it’s left up to what’s called integrity and looking at it I don’t see the integrity meter pegged on managements side, so why only look at labor?

 

[mweiss]

Cav, maybe you had a little difficulty reading my question, so I'll ask it again, a little easier to read:

Do the contracts define acceptable uses of sick leave?

Can you answer the question now?

 

[oldiebutgoody]

Other than the terminology "sick leave", I've never seen any guidance. That, plus the fact that they have the right to demand a doctor's note. I don't see where the ambiguity is.

 

[cavalier]

Cav, maybe you had a little difficulty reading my question, so I'll ask it again, a little easier to read:

Do the contracts define acceptable uses of sick leave?

Can you answer the question now?

Sorry. I am color blind...say again

 

[pitguy]

At this company one can be sick or late 9 times in a four

year period and be fired. What do you want?


How much worse do you want to make it?


That is their program. They don't tell you about that though do they?


Who is abusing who?

 

[JS]

Regarding the cost of sick leave being included in total employee compensation --

Let me give you an analogy. Suppose you buy a $100,000 10 year term life insurance policy. This means the insurance company has set aside enough money to pay your beneficiary $100,000 should you die in the next 10 years. This amount is in the ballpark of $3,000.

Using the logic of some people in this thread, it's fine to fake your death near the end of the 10 year period (if you didn't actually die) to get the $100,000 you "deserve". Of course, this would mean a $100,000 death benefit would require a premium of $100,000 rather than $3,000, a steep increase.

So, with the sick policy, the cost is calculated using reasonable sick rates. If you abuse it by calling in sick when you are not sick, you are increasing costs, and that ultimately means pay cuts for you and your fellow employees, whether they have a good work ethic or they share your crummy work ethic.

 

[mweiss]

Sorry. I am color blind.

Wow. And they still let you poke your wrenches around machines? Wonder what the FAA would have to say about this?

Perhaps outsourcing to foreigners is the lesser of the two evils, then?

 

[fatherabraham]

So, with the sick policy, the cost is calculated using reasonable sick rates. If you abuse it by calling in sick when you are not sick, you are increasing costs, and that ultimately means pay cuts for you and your fellow employees, whether they have a good work ethic or they share your crummy work ethic.

JS,

Way to go, it took 6 pages but you nailed it.

The non abusers have been subsidizing the abusers by often working harder and getting paid less over the long run. Pathetic! :angry:

 

[PITMTC]

At this company one can be sick or late 9 times in a four
year period and be fired. What do you want?

How much worse do you want to make it?

That is their program. They don't tell you about that though do they?

Who is abusing who?

In all fairness pitguy:
What about you co-worker who calls in sick for one to three days every four months on the day. I work with people that are "sick" every four months. They can be sick up to 20 days a year, every year over and over, and can not be fired.
The problem I have with this is that they boast about their program and try to explain this to other employees in the breakrooms so they could "burn" their days also.
How come we don't critisise these guys when they get on there soap box and rather we pump them up and show them support?

 

[ELP_WN_Psgr]

I hate to throw the class warfare card, but I will anyway.

Let's talk about management.

If a manager, particularly an upper level manager, decides to give himself a day off to go see a kid's dance recital or school play, are there any repercussions? Nope, Rank hath its privileges.

How many offsite business meetings and conferences amongst the bigwigs get held at resorts or country clubs...so that after discussing nothing pertinent to the survival of the airline, everyone retires for a r ound of golf for "team building" purposes?

Did Wolf ever demand that Gangwal bring him a doctor's excuse?

As far as standing on the contract to either "gotcha" the employee or the employees trying to protect themselves....at this company it is pointless. It does not appear that management honors the contracts (and whether they signed it or their predecessor did is irrelevant, a contract ought to binding.) The management of USAirways reminds me a whole lot of Leona Helmsley or a certain senator from new York...rules are only for the "little people".

A better way to work the sick-but-not-really-sick deal would be to give the company the right, but not the requirement, to terminate about 2 1/2 percent of the workforce with the worst attendance records each year with no recourse to grievance.

What does that do? It gets rid of your sick call abuse. People don;t want to put themselves at risk. For the truly sick...someone who had cancer surgery, for example....with all the documentation the company will have...they are not required to get rid of them. And if they did, they are worse horse's butts than anyone could imagine.

I've seen the "terminate bottom 3% annually rules before" and the truth is.....it really does get rid of people who are abusing the system without forcing people who are truly ill into the office where they can infect everyone else.

Then again, it all depends on who is applying the rules.

Getting back on topic......I'm afeared that what you have here is elitist management who has no issue living by a different set of standards than they enforce. And that's a bad thing.

 

[cavalier]

How come we don't critisise these guys when they get on there soap box and rather we pump them up and show them support?

I don't think a brain surgeon's mind is necessary for that answer.

There is absolutely NONE/ZERO incentive not to burn sick time.

We have the good captain on here every day of the week telling us how much pain we are going to feel if we don't listen to him, it makes us sick but will MUST not call off.

We have daily rumors of gloom and doom.

We have yet another upcoming round of sacrifices.

We can work an entire year, year in and year out and are rewarded the exact same as the guy who you just described that uses his sick time.

We can work every day of every year never missing, if we are blessed with good health that is, trying to help our company only to watch CEO and CFO types come in every other year and take millions off the top while we after years and years are given nothing, except to hear, "be glad you have a job".

Go ahead all you goodie two shoes and be a pillar of integrity, a beacon of virtue, come to work sick, or under extreme mental duress so you can claim perfect attendance, this way when the next executive comes through the door there will be plenty left for him to also become a millionaire and retire while you plug along year after year making more executives rich and hope to God they don't take away your pension so you can survive in your golden years.

I love these people! God Bless them all. I personally use my sick time, always have and will until it’s over.

Hope my post doesn’t make you sick.

 

[Tim Nelson]

My understanding is that your company actually increased sick leave benefit over 200% with fleet service when they agreed to reduce 5 vacation days per year but increased the sick accrual from 5 days to one per month.

Now I am told that employees are armed with several sick days in their benefit package.

If it saves the company money and the employees are willing to go for it, why not drop 12 sick days to 7 and increase vacation 5 days? Open time agents can plan on vacation coverage but sick days can not be planned for and cost your company millions more a year. An element of Creative thinking? I think so. Is it a concession for employees? Yes but just because it saves the company money doesn't mean it doesn't benefit employees. Win for company and Win for employees, I think so.

Sick days are like DAT days, they cost the company alot of cash because they are unplanned based on open time scheduling.

regards,