Jan.16, 2004

By Alex J.Walling

Say it isn’t so.

Surely someone has to be kidding?

It has to be a misprint?

Read in the Daily News about the mess surrounding the Nova Scotia Liquor Corp and that sick leave by some of the employees of the NSLC is costing us millions of bucks.

Millions, or a lot of money that could go into health care, is being spent on ‘sick days’.

MLA Keith Colwell did us all a favour when he got information under the freedom of information act.

In brief it shows that ‘sick leave’ is out of control at the NSLC.

And ‘out of control’ is being kind. How about being misused or abused instead? How about criminal charges for those who abused the system? Either they abused it or have the sickest employees in the country.

How about …we (the taxpayers) are being ripped off!

It’s borderline criminal and it begs to have the government ‘privatize’ the booze business.

I’d like to see a list of those who had 100 or more sick days. Why not? We are paying for their salaries.

I’d be willing to wager that on some of those ‘sick leave days’ many could be found at the golf course.

One thing for sure is that in the world of private business ‘sick leave’ is something that is hard to get.

As an owner I have no problem in an employee being sick, not one and it does happen, but they had better be able to prove it.

How many of those NSLC ‘sick leavers’ are sick on a Saturday and Sunday?

I have a problem when a worker comes in late much less calls in sick. Last summer I hired 15 students for a summer business and guess what the #1 sick day was?

It was Sunday our busiest day and it followed Saturday night when kids like to ‘party’.

Party on your time not mine and if you can’t come to work then find another occupation is what several were told.

Workers are getting paid to work not to take time off, so if they are sick they should be able to prove it.

This is not a matter of ‘individual rights’ but rather an obligation and commitment to a company. That commitment is show up to work unless you are sick. But the underlining words are ‘but you had better be sick, not just wanting a free day off’.

I understand that each NSLC employee is entitled to 2 ½ days of sick time per month. Per Month!

You gotta to be kidding.

Who in the world agreed to such?

What bureaucrat agreed to this request?

And why?

What happened to the one sick day a month? Heck that makes 12 days a year or nearly 2 ½ weeks and if someone needs that kind of time off they should be seeing a doctor and not taking time from a company.

But the NSLC has 2 ½ days per month. That comes out to 30 SICK DAYS A YEAR!

30! Or SIX FULL WEEKS!

I can hear the conversation now: “Oh, I get three weeks holidays and another SIX WEEKS FOR SICK LEAVE.” Must be nice.

Maybe I come from another time and after reading about the NLSC, perhaps another planet and so must many of my media friends.

Most of the guys I have had the privilege in working with wouldn’t miss 2 ½ days a year.

In 39 years of being in this business I doubt if I have missed ten days. In my five years at MITV (1988-93) I missed five days, or one day a year and four of those involved my kids being taken to hospital or school injuries etc.

And in real life, much like in sports, I believe if you can go to work and be able to work and not effect people (germs etc) then you go and do your job.

Yes, it may mean you stay in your cubby hole and not socialize and not feel all to well but if you can still do your job then there is a responsibility to do it.

Does that sound too much like old school?

Is that attitude still around today? I would hope it is.

How often does one hear that CTV’s Lloyd Robertson is sick, or Peter Mansbridge? The answer is not often.

CJCH Open line host Rick (Hotline) Howe missed his first day in six YEARS last week and he wasn’t sick but rather was assigned to a management meeting by his bosses. One time in six years and the guy gets up around 5 am to get to work. I am sure there are days he didn’t feel like coming in but he didn’t call in and take a ‘sick day’.

Sick days, what a copout for so many.

I worked with a radio legend in these parts, Clive Schaefer, and he didn’t miss a day in the years I was at CHNS and I am told he may have missed one day in 15-20 years.

That’s correct….15-20 years. He worked for that company for nearly 35 years and one could count on one hand the amount of sick days that he took.

“One day Clive couldn’t speak as he had laryngitis,” Jim Crichton the former CHNS news director told me, “but he came in anyway and wrote the news and got the (news) clips from the audio service”.

Some people complain having to work when it is so cold. Let me introduce you to the camera people of ATV, CBC and GLOBAL who have to spend their day outside shooting the news stories that you see on the 6pm news. And not too many call in sick.

I don’t pretend that ‘media’ or ‘broadcasting’ have better people than other occupations but perhaps in our business we realize if we are not there to do the job then someone else has to. It’s not like an office job where the pile gets bigger and can be tackled the next day.

If a dee jay is supposed to be on the air from 10am -2pm and calls in sick, the station cannot just have dead air for four hours and thus someone at the station, already with assignments and responsibilities, will have to do that shift along with their regular work load.

One of the worst feelings in the radio business is getting a call around 4 am saying ‘our morning host is ill please come in.” It doesn’t happen to often.

I admit to either being good to very good in hiring people or darn lucky or probably a bit of both. In hiring people for the career college I owned for 15 years and other small businesses that I have either owned or managed I was able to get employees who ‘wanted to work’ and who realized in a small setting that missing a day would have serious implications.

So it means working when we are not ‘feeling well’ or ‘feeling 100%’. It means working with a cough or even a runny nose. And I think that is a big part of the problem these days and that is people are looking ‘for ways not to go to work’.

If you are sick, then you are sick and should not be in or at the workforce. But being ‘really sick’ and simply ‘not up to par’ ‘or not feeling that well’ are two different things and many these days can’t tell the difference.

Also this ‘sick leave’ thing has made us softies. “Oh, I have a day or two or more a month of sick leave so I may as well take them,” seems to be a prevailing attitude.

Sick days are for when you are sick and if you are not then you are cheating your employer or the tax payer if they are used for anything but.

I had one and only one employee in the last 20 years who fought me on sick days and her point was if she didn’t use it she should have it as a holiday. Needless to say we soon parted ways. She threatened to sue me and I told to please ‘do so’ as I would love to hear her argument. The lawsuit never happened.

Employees are hired for one thing and that is to work and they are paid to do that. They are not hired for their good looks or for how many jokes they can tell or how well they can gossip but to do the job and to do it as best as they can and to be at work and on time (another column) on a daily basis.

As for holidays every employee gets some.

If you are not sick and want to have a day off, go see your boss and ask for a day from your vacation and most of the time you will be given that.

“Why, should I use MY vacation days when I can use a sick day,” has been mentioned to me and therein lays another problem that employees can’t seem to grasp.

Somewhere, someone forgot to tell employees that they work for a boss or a company not the other way around.

“We do get sick, sir” one employee told me and that is correct. But if a person starts being sick one or two days a month then I ask them to get a check up because a person may be too sick to work and if that is the case then the person should not be at that workplace. Most small employees need people to show up to work about every day and this ‘once a month sick leave baloney’ is a sure way of causing tension in the workplace.

Some are or get sick, suffer accidents or injury and to those I am sure they get all the support a company can muster but they are the exception. I’ve run into only a handful in my near 40 years in the workplace.

The liquor guys who got over 100 sick days a year either ripped of the system or belong in hospital.

And if there is ever a case to privatize liquor and alcohol in this province this is it.

I can’t see anyone missing 10 days a year much less 100 at some of these convenience stores.