Posted on 02/20/2011 8:40:43 AM PST by redreno
As investigators probe the potential abuse of sick leave by firefighters, Clark County officials say they will find many instances of employees scheduling sick time off weeks or months in advance. Among them is a firefighter who used the benefit to help carve out 53 consecutive days off in 2009.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
>My question is when they take a sick day do they get charged 24 hours for each sick day or only 8 hours?<
I can’t answer for that department. But where I worked we were charged by the hour for sick time, not by the day.
If you were an hour sick, or eight. It was done hour by hour.
We were given 80 hours sick per year after 5 years. You could accrue 120 hours max.
Which was good because if you suffered a heart attack or something you needed every day of it.
We were also able to give blocks of 8 hours to other members of the agency who were out in such instances. They came directly off of our own sick time. Kind of like a benefit for them, give from your bank to theirs if they were out for an extended period with some serious illness. In 20 years I only know of two people we did it for. Both of them were in bad shape and were hospitalized for long periods of time. One returned to work after about 5 months. One retired within the year (the state took their time with the paperwork.
A single union is not what any first responder wants that I know of. But the liberals who hate first responders were all over that .. how bad republicans were for fighting that bill.
Fires are way down due to safety measures instituted over the decades. No wonder firefighters fiddle around so much (like you described) plus now they do EMT just to keep firefighters busy when they are not getting on the cooking channel or pumping iron. In my youth no fire station did EMT.
Police work is not down. In a lousy economy it is probably up though not as bad as one might expect due to so much welfare money and SSI being handed out...that sort of calms the waters
In one city I saw lots of contractors trucks in the parking lot of the fire station. Putting two and two together..... Fireman are getting contacting jobs (referrals) to take care of problems found during a fire inspection. You want that problem to go away...You hire Joe the fireman/contractor who is well rested up from his 48 hour fire fighting shifts
I (personally) didn’t take offense - and am certainly not answering for Crapgame. I think he was right with what he wrote.
But still I appreciate you clarifying that not all places are the same or handle the problems the same way.
I always scheduled stuff on my days off. It is not a hard thing to do. But if you read through my threads here on this post. You can see how the system can be so easily abused as well. For instance, since we get 80 hours per year that accumulates to 120. After your bank has 120 hours your just giving that time back to the employer many people believe. So they “use it or lose it”. I never agreed with it, but it was beyond my pay scale to make any changes even if I could figure out a more fair way of doing it.
I was just happy to be able to have sick time to use legitimately if I needed it. I thought it quite the privilege after having worked at places where there was none. You didn’t work, you didn’t get paid.
>Having also been up close and personal with police work, firemen and the military, I agree with you! All should be paid a fair wage for their duties and all do occasionally face danger. The vast majority of them don’t. They all know their duties and job descriptions before they sign on for it. They all volunteer to do what they do.<
I liked your post. I think you have some very valid points. But there is one thing I would like to add if I may. I signed up for my job, at a wage that was pitiful. But I was okay with that. I didn’t mind doing it for what i was paid. But I saw teachers making over 3 times what I made and they certainly never faced what i did. The worst part of everything I have experienced is that when I was hurt bad enough, I was just tossed aside. Forced to retire and my family was screwed for support.
My bad life decision of doing what I thought was right did not pay off for them. There should have been more done to take care of my family. Many times I have grappled the reality that they would have been much better off financially had I been killed on the job instead of left for dead.
>As an administrator my job was to minimize overtime by my officers. As you so accurately stated, police work is event driven. Years ago, we were required to complete all reports before we went home even if it meant overtime.<
We were required to finish paperwork as well, or at least have a preliminary report ready for immediate access. But overtime for such things was NEVER granted. When I was new to the job for the first two years or so, I was coming in two hours early or staying two hours after for paperwork. My own time. Hey that’s what is expected, that is what you do right?
The firefighters and police officers did not understand the full import of the bill. The single federalized union would have taken away all local control of salaries and benefits, not to mention hiring and hiring standards. It was predicted that some rural areas could have lost their police force altogether and been forced to contract for services from the nearest city or town. Local hiring might have become a thing of the past. It was really a very dangerous bill.
Republicans who voted for the bill refused to vote for the part that added the federalized union.
The federalized control over state and local government is the danger in all the public sector unions. The teachers’ unions kind of snuck up on us because we didn’t see the relationship between the schools and the government. We see it with the SEIU and First Responders.
I am very sorry for your particular situation. However, how would you write the rules for everyone despite your situation?
Well the state court has stated that deputies who have been injured in the line of duty can not be given just 1/3 pay and be expected to pay for medical benefits etc. Which is exactly what I got. My insurance bills for my family are more than my take home from the state alone.
I woudl have been happy with half pay or 3/4 like every other guy injured in the line of duty. The state appellate court set the rules, apparently the state retirement system and my county just don’t want to abide by them.
I can’t get anywhere with them at all.
I understand that. But as i said, I don;t know of any cops that were in favor of this. Even the firefighters in our area who have GREAT benefits that they negotiated didn’t want it because they were afraid that they would lose their benefits in the end.
I think most cops just want to have local unions to address the particular issues of their departments and areas of jurisdictions. Not to mention that they don’t want to get sucked up into a “national police force” which has been talked about for years
Where I live, it is the Firefighters union that has a control thing going on, mostly with the EMTs. At least that is the most obvious issue.
The FF from the city of Bellingham want to provide EMT services to the whole county and control all the jobs openings, as well, even at other stations, not under the city union.
Our City tried to get the Fire Department to muscle out the local ambulance company because they saw it as a revenue maker. They charged people for taking them to hospitals, which I can see. But to actually try to get rid of a private company that ran an ambulance service seemed to me like the city was trying to go into business for itself for revenue.
We fought it hard. To date the ambulance company still exists.
Well, in the "normal world" that would make sense. But, in my opinion, if somebody's duty day is 24hours, if they take a sick day then their sick day accumulation should be charged 24 hours and not 8 hours.
All I can say is many public employees have priced themselves out of the job market. Do you remember the recent discovery that the stage hands at Lincoln center average 290,000 dollars a year! For that kind of money I’d work 60 hours a week-50 weeks a year.
>Well, in the “normal world” that would make sense. But, in my opinion, if somebody’s duty day is 24hours, if they take a sick day then their sick day accumulation should be charged 24 hours and not 8 hours.<
I would think that if they were out for “one shift” of 8 / 16 / 24 hours, that many hours should be deducted as well.
But your question comes from the article I believe. The writer may not have considered how that time is really accounted for .. or they may really be taking advantage of sick in that way. I don’t know. But I agree with you. Hour by hour that they are out should be deducted.
During his campaign for president, Obama said he was going to create a domestic police force as large and as powerful as our military. That was a shocker to most of us but nothing else was said about it except for Rush mentioning it once not too long ago. Perhaps that is his intention, to use the unions to solidify all of the forces. I doubt that will receive much support from the officers themselves but they may be faced with do it or lose their jobs. The recent rolling out of union muscle on other issues may be the harbinger.
NO, I think his civilian army he was talking about was much more politically oriented. Like his community organizer push
This move about nationalizing the police is geared to taking state laws away and making the united states ONE state run by the federal government. Unionizing the police under one umbrella would be the first step. Then talk of “consolidation of services” would be the next step.
Consolidation is good, but only on a very small level. never at a big one like that in regard to this issue IMO
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