Taxpayers blamed for sickies pulled by civil servants

‘Sick leave is now on track to hit record levels in the civil service’

- Sam Lister Associate Editor

IVIL 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.

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.”