City council gets tough on sick pay – social work is the worst department

Staff at Scotland’s largest local authority will face disciplinary action and have sick pay removed if they breach new rules on absenteeism.

Glasgow City Council’s executive committee will this week be asked to introduce policies which mean anyone who hits the trigger points for sick days will automatically have council sick pay removed except in exceptional cases.

The move could leave repeat “sickie” offenders receiving just £15-a-day statutory sick pay.

It comes as staff at the council facing a change to shift patterns have been told they could have their contracts terminated if they fail to agree to the new system.

Around 1300 workers have received letters with the “take it or leave it” offer, sparking threats of potential industrial action.

The council is also looking for 133 redundancies.

According to new figures, the city council’s 32,500 staff take an average of almost 13 days off sick each year.

The action is aimed at improving absence levels and saving the council £5m a year. Social work is the worst department with an average sick rate of 17 days for each member of staff.

The average for development and regeneration workers is 11 days, education excluding teachers 13.9 days, teachers 8.8 days, financial services 10.1 days and land and environmental services 14.3 days.

The council wants absences cut to an average of nine days a year over the next two years.

Currently the council can choose to discipline staff who are off for more than six working days within six months, have five absences or eight working days off within a year or any period of unauthorised absence by not giving them occupational sick pay. But it rarely uses this power.

A spokesman said: “Our absence rate has been too high for too long. At a time when budgets are under severe strain it cannot be right for us to accept far higher rates of absence than the private sector.”

Mike Kirby, convener of Unison’s Glasgow City branch, said the union did not condone any abuse of the system because of the impact it had on other staff.

But he added: “We think the council should be considering a welfare approach to managing people and different working environments rather than going after people.

“If they look at where the high percentages of absence are they tend to be within the manual occupations.

“Also in social work and social care where we have people working in a lone environment with some of the more difficult members of the community.

“We would see this move as a change in peoples’ contracts which we would oppose if the council’s intention is to impose it unilaterally.”

Meanwhile, the authority says changes to the shift patterns of roads and parks workers, as well as street sweepers, will save £5m over the next two years and is essential at a time of worsening finances.

Staff would no longer work in one specific area but across three services, but the council insists that although some workers will put in 11 hour shifts they will work 66 fewer days for the same salary, while some will earn £1000 more.