Photosales
niJobfinder
niCarfinder
Home Delivery
Propertynews
Civil servants sick days costing £25m a year
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Assembly members today suggested a link between Civil Service sick leave and “overstaffing” within local Government departments.
In a hard-hitting report, MLAs also described the public sector as a “drag anchor” on the province's economic performance.
The report, by Stormont's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), had harsh words for Civil Service chiefs, accusing them of doing “nothing” about high female absenteeism rates.
Sick leave within the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) has been under focus for years, with successive ministers vowing to tackle the problem.
The PAC report, published today, said: “Civil Service sickness absence levels in Northern Ireland are around 36% higher than in Great Britain (GB) and are costing the NICS more than £25m a year in direct salary costs.
“The NICS has set a target to reduce absence to an average of 9.5 days per employee by 2010.
“However action taken to date has not delivered levels of the order necessary to meet this target and absence is currently 12.7 days per employee.”
The cross-party committee said the level remained “unacceptably high” and it was a matter of concern that the problem “was allowed to become so entrenched for so long”.
It added: “The recent rate of improvement needs to be maintained so that progress is made towards achieving the target.”
The MLAs further stated: “The committee has a concern that in some areas of the NICS, high levels of absence and poor absence management may be related to over staffing i.e. that high numbers of staff may provide a built-in provision for absence and thus provide no incentive for managers to address absence management.”
Today's report also noted: “The level of sickness absence in the Northern Ireland public sector is more than twice that of the private sector.”
Civil Service |sickness absence levels in Northern Ireland are around 36% higher than in Great Britain
The Assembly members said “contributory factors” on the differential with the private sector were “the generous terms and conditions of employment in the public sector”, particularly “relatively preferential” occupational sick pay arrangements.
“Nevertheless, it appears to the committee that the much lower levels of absence in the local private sector must also be a reflection of the fact that this issue is much better managed by private businesses,” the report added.
The Stormont body said the problem of absenteeism had “clearly been pushed up departments' priorities since devolution by the active interest of local ministers”.
“As so often when the public service is faced with a major challenge, there has been no shortage of bureaucratic activity in terms of research, committees, working parties and reports addressing absence.” it added.
“However, many of these have not been acted upon, important questions remain unanswered and, too often, plans have been put in place but not seen through.”
There was also strong criticism for the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP), which has overall responsibility for NICS staffing matters.
“Levels of female sickness absence in NI are almost double the female rate in GB,” the committee continued. “DFP has been aware of this for many years, but has done nothing about it and clearly has no plan as to how it will deal with it in future.”
- Text Size
As the husband of a female ex civil servant I know from personal experience that the much vaunted equality policies of NICS are being ignored. My wife was being bullied and harassed by 4 of her male line managers who actually made her working life intolerable, when she tried to put a stop to their behaviour using their internal grievance procedures those same managers refused to follow any of it. Indeed they acted on the advice of the Personnel Department, who not being made accountable to public scrutiny can ignore those same practices that they legally require private companies to abide by, or be sued.
Posted by James Mordal | 09.01.09, 18:48 GMT
Adam civil servants are hard working people who have been the backbone of this society for many years and working for less pay than they should have been getting.
Every time the hard working front line civil servants are to be paid it is amazing how the fictional sick leave statistics come out from ministers etc, who had two months paid holidays during the summer where are their statistics of non attendance? And I think that they are getting paid more than £13,130 to £17,099 a year.
It is time to support your local Civil Servant not abuse them.
Posted by An | 05.09.08, 12:33 GMT
I've just seen the head of the N.I Civil Service on a news program defending the high levels of the sick leave. He said it was about "stress". What a pathetic excuse. He must think the people are stupid.If these workers didn't get paid for the days they phone in hung over I mean "stressed" maybe they would attend work more. The problem is getting paid for taking days off. I know civil servants. They sit and laughing about this farce of a system down in their local pubs. When other workers are going home, they laugh and sit on drinking and saying how they will phone in sick and still get a days wage. Simple solution. If they wanna take days off when they are hung over or whatever else, don't pay them their wages for the days off. Why should the majority of private sector workers who when ill don't get paid (if they do it's small sick pay and not the full blown wages civil servants get)and civil servants do with OUR TAXES. It's not on. No wonder the country is turning into a farce!
Posted by adam | 04.09.08, 18:23 GMT
So once again the government trots out it's gerrymandered sick records to turn public opinion against civil servants. These quoted figures are artificially high in comparison to the private sector because they include people on long term sick- eg if someone in an office with 20 people has cancer and is off for a year, this is recorded as 18.25 days 'average' sick days per officer, even if no one else has a single day off!! The motivation this time appears to be to do civil servants out of the back pay they are entitled to after years of povertty wages. By the way, these people who accusing civil servants of being lazy- I would like to see you survive one day in a benefits office. You obviouosly don't have a clue.
Posted by jim | 04.09.08, 18:18 GMT
I am a civil servant and have only had 2 sick days in 5 years - the line managers need to single out the ones who are off on a regular basis & get a written warning straightaway instead of keeping them under "cotton wool" & worrying about how they deal with the member of staff - there is no need for all these sick days - most of the offenders are the younger members of staff
This should be placed in the Civil Service Handbook so that all members are made aware of it.
Posted by Speers | 04.09.08, 10:20 GMT
And now the Civil Servants expect £100 million in back pay to fund their sick days! Another rip off for tax payers money.
Posted by Seamus | 04.09.08, 10:04 GMT