Cook County employees take nearly twice as much paid sick leave as other state and local government workers across the country, according to statistics compiled by the county.
In the fiscal year that ended Nov. 30, 2011, the county said that on average, each employee took 6.64 hours of paid sick leave a month, compared with 3.6 hours a month for state and local government workers nationally, a figure based on a 2010 report by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Within Cook County, the monthly numbers varied considerably by department, from an average of 3.24 hours per employee in the Board of Commissioners to 8.05 hours per employee in the assessor’s office. The numbers for county employees over all have remained virtually unchanged since the 2010 fiscal year, when county employees averaged 6.68 hours of paid sick leave monthly.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who took office in December 2010, is monitoring the frequency of paid sick leave, said Liane Jackson, a spokeswoman for Preckwinkle.
“Our human resources and policy departments are currently tracking and identifying where abuses are occurring, and working on solutions to fix the problems,” Jackson said.
She added that the administration was assessing several strategies to address excessive sick leave, including working with pro bono consultants and analyzing data, and will soon begin a pilot program to test ideas that the county hopes will save millions of dollars.
It is unknown whether Cook County employees take more sick leave because they are more prone to illness than other government workers or because they are taking advantage of the system. But Jackson said the administration believed “clearer written policies as well as better oversight and management will improve the numbers.”
Anders Lindall, the spokesman for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 5,000 county workers, also thinks management is the key. “It’s no secret that poor management has dogged county operations for years,” he said. “If the president believes there is a problem with improper use of sick time, her supervisors have the tools to remedy any alleged abuse. That’s the responsibility of management.”
In Chicago, city employees are more likely than average to suffer from significant chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and asthma, according to city budget documents, prompting officials to seek proposals for a wellness program to cut the costs of employees’ health care.
Cook County has rarely, if ever, collected such statistics, in part because the county board president has no direct control over the staffs of separately elected officials, who include the sheriff, chief judge and recorder of deeds.
Neil Khare, Preckwinkle’s policy director, said that “simply monitoring the data has led to improved attendance in certain departments.” The administration now tracks sick time, he said, and requires departments to explain their usage during weekly performance review sessions.
Khare said that at Cook County Works, which provides county residents with employment assistance services, the monthly average number of sick hours per employee dropped to 5.3 in May 2011, from 8.2 in December 2010, which he attributed to better management. The reduction in sick leave was the equivalent of adding one to two full-time workers at no cost to taxpayers, Khare said.
The typical Cook County employee receives one paid sick day for each month of service. Most county employees can accumulate up to 175 days, except at health facilities, where the cap is 150 days, Jackson said. Unused sick days roll over from one year to the next but are not paid out when people leave the county government, she said.
State and local government workers take far more paid sick leave than employees in the private sector, according to federal statistics. According to the 2010 labor bureau report, 2.1 percent of the compensation for state and local government employees was for sick leave, compared with 0.8 percent for private sector employees.
Cook County officials are also concerned about employees’ improperly taking time off under the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which entitles certain people to take unpaid, job-protected leave for family and medical reasons including the birth or adoption of a child or to care for a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition.
During budget negotiations last year, Preckwinkle said that one in every five of Sheriff Tom Dart’s employees was off work on any given day through the federal leave program, and at the jail the figure was one in four.
According to Dart’s spokesman, Frank Bilecki, the sheriff’s office reduced the number of leaves under the federal act by 15 percent in the last year. He said the office had taken various steps to reduce abuse, including conducting internal investigations, some of which have resulted in terminations.
Last November, Earl Dunlap, the transitional administrator for the county’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, testified during budget hearings that some employees at the detention center took advantage of the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act to avoid working overtime.
“There is a game that goes on with F.M.L.A. in this county,” Dunlap said. “It is unlike any county that I have seen, in relationship to how the system is abused.”
Nationally, more counties are starting to replace sick leave and vacations with personal leave, which employees may use for any purpose, said Jacqueline Byers, director of research and outreach for the National Association of Counties. Instead of getting two weeks of sick leave and five weeks of vacation, for example, an employee might receive six weeks of personal leave.
”All of this came up as a way of cutting back the abuse of sick leave because people will lie to use sick leave and save their vacation,” Byers said. “When counties want to remove themselves from having to be the watchdog, they give general-purpose leave. It makes it a lot easier for people.”