Beware of ‘duvet day’ numbers and stop divisive slagging of civil servants

YOUR front page headline (April 30) shouted ‘Department staff clocked up 20,000 sick days in three years’.

Newspapers should be more critical of numerical information. The most fundamental law of human nature is that people will get sick.

Hidden in the report was the fact that 18,000 were clocked up in three years. That equals a constant figure of 6,000 per year. The department in question employs almost 5,000 staff.

So, on average, each worker took just slightly more than one day’s uncertified sick leave each year.

Headlines like that should be causes for celebration, but they do not grab the public’s attention.

There are five working days in most weeks. The last time I checked, Monday accounts for exactly 20% of those days. One would therefore expect that 20% of sick absences occur on Mondays, but the medical services in this country effectively shut down at weekends.

People do not get sick by appointment. If people get sick on a Saturday or Sunday, they have to wait until Monday for medical attention. That pushes the daily 20% up to just over 25% for Mondays.

Poor people get sick more often than privileged people. It is no surprise to deduce from your report that the poorer half of the staff account for two-thirds of the sick leave. It is the classic propaganda of the “haves” to label the “have nots” as the worst offenders.

If you are blessed with good health, you cannot see the point I am making. You don’t see it from the other angle until you get sick.

Significant resources are dedicated to overpolicing sick leave. A positive shift to a more motivational attitude would generate a working atmosphere of less fear. Part of the reason why sick days are logged as “uncertified” is that there is a bureaucratic labyrinth of paperwork to be done if you go about reporting your sickness as “certified”.

Politicians love creating smokescreens to divert people’s attention away from far worse problems. They should stop blaming defenceless scapegoats. They would do better to ask themselves how many days off they get each year. The black arts of political spin and distraction make me sick.

Stop slagging the civil servants. Stop creating an artificial divide between public and private sector workers. Roll on election day.

Michael Mernagh

Raheens

Carrigaline

Co Cork