Posted on 01/25/2010 7:04:40 AM PST by myknowledge
A RECORD 500,000 workers took a sickie yesterday to celebrate Australia Day and have earned the reputation of "un-Australian bums".
The four-day weekend some Australians have given themselves has cost the nation about $250 million.
And another 100,000 are expected to take tomorrow off as they wake with Australia Day hangovers.
Absenteeism management firm Direct Health Solutions' director Paul Dundon said many workers found themselves in an unfortunate situation this week with the return of school on Thursday and a public holiday mid-week.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldsun.com.au ...
The four-day weekend some Australians have given themselves has cost the nation about $250 million.
And another 100,000 are expected to take tomorrow off as they wake with Australia Day hangovers.
Can't get enough fun time? Yeah right.
Wishing everyone a happy Australia Day, Australian Freepers.
Could we somehow convince Congress to take a few months off? Consider the money America would SAVE if we could manage just that, LOL!
It’s SUMMER down there. Who, up here, doesn’t take a 4-day weekend over, say, The 4th of July? I’ve never seen data on what we ‘lose’ in productivity for a 4-day weekend in America. Memorial Day? Labor Day? Christmas. Easter. New Year? 4-day weekends? You betcha! :)
The sick leave would've been used today, a month from now or whenever. Besides, it isn't about saving the government money, it's about enjoying life.
Sorry, I don’t ever recall taking a “sick day” to get a four day weekend and every place I’ve ever worked the policy is frowned upon. It’s fine to take preplanned vacation time to stretch a weekend, but do it on your own dime.
When I started at my present employer in 1983, new hires got 22 sick days and 10 vacation days a year. You were not expected to take a sick day unless you barfed up a lung. The 22 sick days covered a work month, after which you could go on optional long term disability.
The policy has now changed to starting you with 15 days of “paid time off” (PTO) and offering an optional “short term disability” leave for sickness in excess of a week and less than a month. (You pay a monthly insurance premium for both short term and long term disability policies.) How you use your 15 days PTO is up to you. Vacation is still supposed to be preplanned and authorized. (Every couple of years you earn an additional day of PTO per year, up to 25 days PTO per year.)
I wonder how they calculate what taking a couple of days off “costs” “the nation.” “Lost productivity”? How many of the employees are really “producing” anything, anyway? Maybe the nation is actually better off because of the busywork these people didn’t do over the last few days.
The “no questions asked” PTO policy is much more sensible.
It came about because of sick-time abuse. Some of the younger employees started treating sick time like extra vacation days.
Sick time was charged to department overhead, the lowest organizational level, so it was always a headache for department managers.
The Aussies have some pretty sympathetic (or clueless) employers, then. Or else more work to do than workers? What’s the GDP of Australia? It’s got to be pretty sizeable for this to make a dent. Or the ‘journalist’ is full of BS, LOL!
Not advocating phoney sick days, I was just saying we take off for 4-day weekends here every bit as much, so I was wondering about the ‘damaged’ productivity level...
Like I said, every place I’ve ever worked that was looked upon as very, very bad form. People did it, I suppose. I guess people who work for the government actually do consider sick days as < wink> vacation < /wink> days.
Yep. It’s ‘use ‘em or lose ‘em.’
Those of use that are self-employed (as I have been in the past and will be again in the near future) are chumps in many, may ways.
Well, Taxpayers in GENERAL are chumps in ANY country you happen to live in. ;)
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