![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Get well soon ... or else!!
Jun. 12th, 2013 04:19 pmThis is Public Service Week, the week when the government highlights all the important work done by federal public servants and tells us how much we are appreciated by offering free burgers and concerts at lunchtime.
So what better way for Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, to kick off the week than by making his big announcement about gutting public servants' sick leave plans to combat malingering and save the taxpayers (except those who happen also to be public servants) a whole pile of money?
Believe me, I forfeited quite a few days' pay due to illness in my early days in the federal public service, back when I was a "casual", a "summer student", a "co-op student", a "term of less than six months" or a contract employee (and certainly not one of those high-priced consultants making a few thousand dollars per day, either!) Is it too much to ask that, once I've been employed for long enough, I get to accumulate sick-days to insure against financial disaster once I'm plagued with the inevitable physical and mental illnesses that may hit me later in my career? Illnesses, I might add, that may well be partly CAUSED by my work environment?
Luckily, I did not need, in my younger, minimum-wage days to take anywhere near the 12 to 18 days that the average federal public servant allegedly takes per year. By the time I got my first major in-service illness, a nasty bout of pneumonia in 1985, I had enough accumulated paid sick leave to cover the month or so I required off from work. Late in my career, when I developed rheumatoid arthritis, due in part to (or, at the very least AGGRAVATED BY, the stress I was undergoing at work in the wake of perpetual reorganizations and downsizing exercises, I likewise had plenty of sick leave built up, although it was far more difficult to take time off as I felt stretched to the limit as it was.
The federal public service demographic is an aging one as it is, and if the government persists in setting the retirement age ever later, that's only going to intensify over the years. The accumulated knowledge, skills, experience and wisdom of the vast numbers of aging baby boomers - and the knowledge transfer to younger generations - is invaluable to the smooth functioning of the federal public service, as it no doubt is for most other organizations and employers. But older people do tend to have more in the way of chronic health issues and sandwich-generation family care demands. It's not a question of the sick leave and disability plans being unaffordable. Indeed, the Government of Canada cannot afford NOT to provide such benefits.
This announcement follows hard on the heels of another one regarding performance appraisal. The Harper Government seems to believe that performance reviews are a new idea in the public service. On the contrary - all the government departments I worked for during my 33-year career had annual performance appraisals. As for firing public servants due to incompetency or incapacity (not to mention laziness, unethical or criminal behaviour, or other obvious unsuitability) being so rare compared to firing of private sector employees... dare I speculate that part of the reason is that in the public sector, they take the time and energy to select the right people in the first place? Public sector recruitment and hiring is notoriously slow, with lots of hoops for the candidates to jump through. Safeguarding the merit principle, human rights, official languages requirements and representativeness in terms of the population to be served, all take quite the network of time-consuming administrative procedures. But in a free and democratic society, we ignore those procedures at our peril!
And I'm sure we'll hear more announcements over the next few weeks and months attacking the supposedly overly generous salaries, pensions and benefits of our public servants.
Happy Public Service week, everyone!
So what better way for Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, to kick off the week than by making his big announcement about gutting public servants' sick leave plans to combat malingering and save the taxpayers (except those who happen also to be public servants) a whole pile of money?
Believe me, I forfeited quite a few days' pay due to illness in my early days in the federal public service, back when I was a "casual", a "summer student", a "co-op student", a "term of less than six months" or a contract employee (and certainly not one of those high-priced consultants making a few thousand dollars per day, either!) Is it too much to ask that, once I've been employed for long enough, I get to accumulate sick-days to insure against financial disaster once I'm plagued with the inevitable physical and mental illnesses that may hit me later in my career? Illnesses, I might add, that may well be partly CAUSED by my work environment?
Luckily, I did not need, in my younger, minimum-wage days to take anywhere near the 12 to 18 days that the average federal public servant allegedly takes per year. By the time I got my first major in-service illness, a nasty bout of pneumonia in 1985, I had enough accumulated paid sick leave to cover the month or so I required off from work. Late in my career, when I developed rheumatoid arthritis, due in part to (or, at the very least AGGRAVATED BY, the stress I was undergoing at work in the wake of perpetual reorganizations and downsizing exercises, I likewise had plenty of sick leave built up, although it was far more difficult to take time off as I felt stretched to the limit as it was.
The federal public service demographic is an aging one as it is, and if the government persists in setting the retirement age ever later, that's only going to intensify over the years. The accumulated knowledge, skills, experience and wisdom of the vast numbers of aging baby boomers - and the knowledge transfer to younger generations - is invaluable to the smooth functioning of the federal public service, as it no doubt is for most other organizations and employers. But older people do tend to have more in the way of chronic health issues and sandwich-generation family care demands. It's not a question of the sick leave and disability plans being unaffordable. Indeed, the Government of Canada cannot afford NOT to provide such benefits.
This announcement follows hard on the heels of another one regarding performance appraisal. The Harper Government seems to believe that performance reviews are a new idea in the public service. On the contrary - all the government departments I worked for during my 33-year career had annual performance appraisals. As for firing public servants due to incompetency or incapacity (not to mention laziness, unethical or criminal behaviour, or other obvious unsuitability) being so rare compared to firing of private sector employees... dare I speculate that part of the reason is that in the public sector, they take the time and energy to select the right people in the first place? Public sector recruitment and hiring is notoriously slow, with lots of hoops for the candidates to jump through. Safeguarding the merit principle, human rights, official languages requirements and representativeness in terms of the population to be served, all take quite the network of time-consuming administrative procedures. But in a free and democratic society, we ignore those procedures at our peril!
And I'm sure we'll hear more announcements over the next few weeks and months attacking the supposedly overly generous salaries, pensions and benefits of our public servants.
Happy Public Service week, everyone!
