Sick-leave under assault in the workplace

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 3, 2005 | by Joe Robinson Los Angeles Times

Even if you can't make it to the local craps tables or you've spent your budget for Lotto tickets this week, chances are you're still doing your part for the new Roulette Economy, thanks to an in- cubicle gaming program sweeping the American workplace.

It's called the paid time-off bank, or PTO, and it's symptomatic of a workplace -- not to mention society -- that increasingly resembles a casino.

Paid time-off banks combine sick leave and vacation days, creating what at first looks like a jackpot -- extra vacation days and more flexibility. But the winnings are subject to the vagaries of chance -- your health -- and corporate sleight of hand. Once your sick days are used up, further absences not covered by short-term disability come out of your holiday hide.

After her company switched to a paid time-off bank, Sherri Landrum, a medical assistant in Denver, discovered the exciting world of luck-based benefits. Last January, the single mother of nine had to have emergency foot surgery. The procedure and prolonged recovery quickly burned through her sick days, wiped out her vacation time and finally hammered her pocketbook. "Half the time I was off, I didn't get paid for," she said. "I couldn't pay my bills, and I'm still not caught up a year later."

Like Landrum, more and more American workers who have used up their puny sick-day allotment will have to decide whether to stumble to work sick or stay home and burn up vacation days. Or worry that if they roll the dice and take time off, it could jeopardize a paycheck if a health emergency hits. It adds another layer of guilt to gobs already there in taking a vacation, making it seem selfish to squander days that might be needed if you or a family member get sick.

All-in-one-leave banks have stormed through offices like rhinoviruses. The number of companies offering them swelled from 20 percent in 2000 to 67 percent today, according to CCH Inc., a human resources firm in Chicago. The epidemic comes as the number of sick- leave days continues to decline or vanish. Just three years ago, the average sick leave provided by companies with sick-leave policies for employees was 9.3 days. Now it's 6.9 days, plunging to five for most paid time-off sick-leave plans.

Those statistics are a shrinking fig leaf on a thornier issue: Nearly half of U.S. workers don't get any paid sick leave -- for low- wage earners, it's 75 percent. Unlike 139 other nations, the United States doesn't guarantee paid sick leave. Let the pneumonias and hernias fall where they may.

Slashed sick leave is part of a broad assault on labor -- roundly ignored in the last election -- across a downsized workplace as the burden of risk shifts from employers to employees, who, if anyone's listening out there, are livid about it, whether Republican or Democrat or independent. Companies are cutting or eliminating vacation leave (nearly a third of American women don't get any; a quarter of men), pensions, health insurance and ergonomics rules. Meanwhile, the Economist reports that corporate profits in the United States are higher than they've been in 75 years as benefits - - including sick leave -- shrink.

Only one segment of wage earners has not had benefits slashed. "Professionals, managers and CEOs have great benefits," said Robert Drago, a Penn State economist and work-life expert. "For some reason, they no longer believe they have to treat employees on the front lines with dignity and benefits."

Employers say that merging sick- and vacation-leave policies increases attendance and efficiency. "It certainly reduces unplanned absenteeism," said Rich Chaifetz, chief executive of human resource firm ComPsych. "Sick days are typically unplanned, which results in significant burdens to corporations when individuals don't show up for work unexpectedly."

"We have found a positive impact on last-minute absenteeism," said Anne Ballentine, a vice president at Covenant Healthcare System in Milwaukee, a company that's had a paid time-off program for five years. "If you know you can use that day as a vacation day another time, you're less apt to do that."

But at a time when almost 40 percent of Americans are already in deep zombie mode, working more than 50 hours a week, PTO programs don't seem to be doing what their champions believe. Unscheduled absences not only haven't fallen, they rose to a five-year high in 2004, according to CCH Inc. That could be because the odds are long on the basic premise of the system: that you can plan absences and book viruses, car accidents and sick kids on the calendar months in advance with your boss.

PTO advocates are fond of saying that it doesn't matter what we call the time off anymore -- sick, vacation, personal time -- it's all the same. The blurring helps obscure the nature of a policy that holds very different leave purposes hostage to one another.

All-in-one time-off banks stack the deck toward younger, healthier and single employees. Those who stay healthy can, in theory, take vacations, and employees with health problems -- or children or parents with health problems -- often end up with scraps.