It’s expected money for the overhaul, which Treasury Board bureaucrats have been working on for several years, will be announced in next week’s budget.
The aim of the “disability management initiative” is to get sick and injured workers back to work faster and to tackle a more than $5-billion liability in banked sick days.
On any given day, 19,000 public servants are booked off on some kind of sick leave. On average, federal employees were absent 12.5 days last year — twice the rate of employees in the private sector. In the core public service, workers are off an average of 18 days, when paid and unpaid sick leave, workers’ compensation and disability are taken into account.
The Conservatives are banking on huge savings and many expect the government will develop a short-term disability plan to replace banked sick leave and create a disability case management system that puts more emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation and wellness to get the ill and injured back to work faster.
Public servants get 15 days of sick leave a year, which they can accumulate and carry over year to year. Sick employees must exhaust their accumulated sick leave before they qualify for disability, which covers 70 per cent of salary. The plan has a 13-week waiting period so anyone with less that 13 weeks of accumulated sick leave is off work without pay other than employment insurance sick benefits.
It’s expected the government will want a sick leave model similar to the one at Canada Post, which became a strike issue when introduced. Canada Post employees get seven days of personal leave, and once those are exhausted they have to go on short-term disability and are entitled to 70 per cent of salary. They cannot accumulate or roll over more than five unused days.
The government would have to negotiate the changes with unions, which have acknowledged that the existing sick leave system hasn’t worked like it should. Still the unions know that tampering with it could be a flash point with their members; they faced an unexpected major backlash from members when they negotiated a deal for a salary increase to surrender severance pay for workers to voluntarily leave the public service.
It’s unclear what would happen to banked sick leave. If the government tried to eliminate it, a risk is that employees, who consider their accumulated leave an earned entitlement, could start calling in sick to use up their days.
The government has four separate disability plans covering about 352,500 employees. The plan managed by Sun Life Financial is one of the largest in the country and covers 240,400 unionized employees. Public servants had to pay a 20-per-cent increase in premiums beginning Feb. 1 to cover an unexpected surge in claims.
Treasury Board launched a $5.6-million disability management initiative several years ago to get a handle on the government’s record-high absenteeism rates and soaring disability rates — led by an epidemic of mental health claims.
The project team set up to lead the initiative developed a strategy for departments, along with a guidebook, manual and training, and was supposed to give cabinet a business plan on next steps last year. The new strategy is aimed at preventing injury and illness in the workplace and getting managers to actively support workers who are on sick leave and ensure they get early care and back to work as quickly as possible.
The team came up with a four-year plan which a year ago was estimated would cost $24 million. The changes, however, could generate hundreds of millions in savings.
The government is under pressure to rein in its $43 billion yearly wage bill, which represents 18 per cent of all program expenses and 38 per cent of direct program spending that the Conservatives have been trying to reduce.
The Parliamentary Budget Office recently estimated the average public servant is costing Canadians $114,000 a year in salary, pensions and benefits and that is poised to rise.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has long pressed the government to bring public servants’ pay and benefits in line with other Canadians’. Last year, the government increased the retirement age and forced public servants to pay 50 per cent of pension premiums.
The government could move to a 50-50 cost sharing for disability premiums, which will be another hit on public servants’ wallets. The government now contributes 85 per cent and employees pay the remaining 15 per cent. Executives get 100 per cent of their premiums paid.
For years, the management board overseeing disability insurance has warned that the 43-year-old plan is so archaic that the benefits aren’t helping a growing number of sick and disabled public servants get better and go back to work.
The board has quietly raised flags about the growing number of disability claims and the “governance” of the giant insurance plan, which hasn’t been updated or retendered since it was awarded to Sun Life in 1970. The board is comprised of union and government representatives and reports to Treasury Board.
Rising mental health claims — which account for nearly half of all claims — have given the public service the reputation as the most stressed out, anxious workforce in the country, with Ottawa called the “depression capital of Canada.”
Mental health advocates have also openly criticized the government’s disability plan, arguing the insurance plans were created more than 40 years ago when people were off work because of physical injuries and illnesses related to their work.
40 years ago, the recovery rates from cancer were poorer and people often didn’t return to work after they were diagnosed — and no one talked about depression in the workplace.
Critics argue the government needs a system that focuses on prevention and is tailored to episodic illnesses of today’s workplace. Under the existing plans, public servants stay off work much longer than they need to because they don’t get the care they need, and the longer workers remain off work, the less likely they were to return.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: KATHRYN MAY
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