Apparently the City of Toronto wants to stop making workers' sick leave bankable, and according to the comments on the article (I know, I know) that's apparently a bizarre and outrageous thing that doesn't happen in The Real World.
This has me flummoxed. Every job I've ever me that has sick leave has bankable sick leave. Not all jobs have sick leave, of course, with some jobs you lose a day's pay if you stay home sick. But my jobs, my friends' jobs, my family's jobs, the jobs of the grownups who were around me when I was growing up, they all either had bankable sick leave or no sick leave whatsoever. I have never in my life encountered the middle ground.
So talk to me about how this works. What happens if you get hardcore sick? With bankable sick leave, the understanding is you aren't going to use all your assigned sick leave in any given year, but you save up the extra and then years from now when you get cancer you'll have weeks or even months banked. Or even what if you get the flu and you need a week off, but you're only allocated one day for that particular month. What happens then? Doesn't the fact that you haven't taken any sick days for the past eight months count for anything?
6 comments:
I once worked at a Big, un-unionized, Office Corp. which had a policy of banking unused sick days and later appending them to an earlier retirement date. Management-of-the-day cancelled that policy and its employed Lifers lost out on months of expected paid leave benefit.
So after they removed the banking option, what happened when people got cancer or needed surgery or something and needed a significant chunk of time off work?
My sick leave has never been bankable, either in the US or Canada. It's doled out per year. Use it or lose it.
If you get really sick, you have to ask for a leave of absence.
Is the leave of absence paid?
And if your sick leave were bankable, do you think it would change your behaviour in terms of how/when/under what circumstances you take a sick day?
"Is the leave of absence paid?"
That depends on the company's policy. Could be yes, could be no.
It could also be disability pay - part from the company, part from the govt.
"And if your sick leave were bankable, do you think it would change your behaviour in terms of how/when/under what circumstances you take a sick day?"
I wouldn't be so keen to use them up the way I am now. I never have time left at the end of the year - I make sure I use every day I get. If I could save some for next year, I might do that.
Also, many of my jobs have not had any paid time off, because they were part-time w/ no benefits, what is called contract in Canada. I'm basing my answer in part on my partner's jobs, since he's in the same industry as me.
Yeah, I was thinking that too. I don't know if I'd use absolutely all my sick time if it wasn't bankable (right now I make my decisions based on how much my team needs me any given day and I can't see that changing), but I'd certainly use it more readily. I'd book my dentist appointments at 2 pm on a weekday and take the rest of the day off instead of having them on Saturdays like I do now, for example.
A lot of the anti-bankable people in those comments seemed completely unable to see how banking might make a person use less sick leave. All the people I've talked to with bankable sick leave agreed that they'd be more likely to use more of it if it weren't bankable.
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