Public service employee unions are often presented with a unique opportunity for graft. The scam is relatively simple, and I’m afraid it’s not uncommon among Fire and Police departments. It works like this: Jim calls in sick, which requires Steve to work overtime. Next week, Steve calls in sick which requires Jim to work overtime. Every 8 hour shift costs the taxpayers 8 hours of sick time plus 8 hours at time-and-a-half for the replacement labor, or a total of 20 hours wages. You only ever hear about these scams in Union-dominated occupations, and they are most common in the field of “public service” where mandates exist specifying the number of officers/firefighters who must be active or ready at any given time.
There are a number of ways that private companies handle “sick time”. Some companies don’t maintain a strict policy, having found that if they allocate 5 sick days per employee, that most employees will use (surprise!) 5 sick days in a calendar year. My current employer has no policy, and no set number of days allocated to each employee, however if you’re going to miss more than 3 consecutive days, I think they require a doctor’s note. My previous employer allocated 6 days per year for designated “sick time.” They would pay you your full hourly rate for the unused balance at the end of the year, which successfully discouraged abuse.
The Examiner reports that the Bay City (MI) fire department has been stealing from the taxpaying public, to the tune of $284,000 in sick pay and overtime. In an investigation conducted by the city’s police chief and human resources director, they find that the 51 firefighters in Bay City called in sick “an average of nearly 120 hours each” in 2008.
Firefighters and their union representative say they’ve done nothing wrong and nobody is calling in sick unnecessarily.
I’ve been working at my current job for about two and a half years, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve called in sick (with a few fingers left over). I was at my previous job for exactly three years, and I could count on one hand how many times I called in sick there, too. Yet the Bay City firefighters are averaging 15 sick days each, per year, and they do not consider this abusive or unnecessary?
At the very least, the city needs to conduct a rigorous physical examination of their firefighters and summarily expel those firefighters who are medically unfit to perform their job-related duties.