Taxpayers blamed for sickies pulled by civil servants

CIVIL service sick leave is on track to hit record levels, but we have now at least learnt why - it's your fault. Analysis found more than four million working days a year are being lost and absence rates in some departments have gone up by 10%. Intriguingly, the shocking rise coincides with moves to a clampdown on working from home.

- Sam Lister

But no, it’s not that civil servants now ring in sick if they are made to go into the office, or that they have a bad case of lazyitis. It turns out the reason they are all dropping like flies is because they have to come into contact with the public.

Pass the smelling salts!

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, insisted there was “absolutely no evidence whatsoever” that civil servants were becoming lazy.

He said: “People working in front-facing roles dealing with the public are more likely to get minor illnesses more often.

“The public sector, that’s what they do, the majority of the public sector are not working in offices, they are working dealing with the public.”

Which is a puzzle, because there are plenty of private sector jobs where staff come into contact with the public — retail, restaurants, bars, cinemas, plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, beauticians, hoteliers, taxi drivers, the list goes on — but the sickness rates are significantly lower in that sector, and have been for every year that has been recorded.

OFFICIAL figures show levels in the public sector are 50% higher, although rates in Whitehall are actually not quite as bad as the rest of those paid by the state.