The federal government has decided to progressively eliminate that 1970s sweetheart arrangement where employees got paid big time at retirement for sick days they didn’t use. To a lot of people the idea is irrational. They say it was done because employers thought people would take less time off if they knew they were going to be paid for the time they didn’t use. Maybe. But it seems certain at some point this bonus was also a heck of an incentive just to get the contract signed. The Treasury Board President Tony Clement calls the current system “archaic” and says it is a “dinosaur of disability management.” “The average…worker uses 18.2 days of paid and unpaid sick leave per year. When you add in the weekends that’s almost a month of the year off, and that is two-and-a-half times the private sector rate of 6.7 days.”
