31 January 2003
But business leaders said the 'sicknote epidemic' across public bodies was a 'national scandal', claiming they were a soft touch for lazy workers at a time when public sector staff were receiving wage rises in excess of their private sector counterparts.
Absence rates in the public sector, which employs a quarter of the UK's 28 million-strong workforce, more than doubled over the past year. They rose from 2.97% of the working year in 2001 to 7.86% in 2002, the study by the Work Foundation reveals.
That amounted to 17.5 days off sick for every public sector employee in 2002 – up from 6.5 days in 2001. The financial cost, the foundation claimed, was incalculable because many public bodies do not keep accurate records.
The sickness rate for the UK as a whole was around nine days a year, while the private sector rate was just seven days annually.
The top five reasons given for absence were colds/flu, stress and emotional problems, food poisoning/stomach bugs, back problems and headaches. More than half of those who had been off sick claimed they had suffered from stress, the report's authors found.
A spokeswoman for Unison, the largest public sector union, claimed many of the sector's problems could be attributed to rising stress levels.
Unison claimed this was a result of 'longer working hours, high levels of staff vacancies that put pressure on existing staff, and rising administrative burdens that result from the drive to meet excessive targets.'
'Employers should be doing more to help. Nurses, for example, have a high level of sickness due to back problems, but they receive very little in-house treatments to help them overcome the problem, so they often develop long-term conditions,' the spokeswoman added.
But Ruth Lea, head of policy at the Institute of Directors, said: 'This is a national scandal… at a time when Gordon Brown is pouring millions into the public services. [It] must undermine promised improvements [in the public sector], such as getting hospital waiting lists down.'
PFjan2003
