Allen,
Speaking as a public service employee, sick days are overly abused by most and under used by others.
Here where I work we had a guy retire after 30 years, never used 1 sick day in those 30 years, always used a day of vacation if he was sick, and when out of sick days, he show up to work and infect everyone else than complain about them takeing a sick day.
Than there are those who call in sick when they know the work load is going to be heavy that day, or just to have the day off befor the weekend.
The adverage public service employee has always accepted a lower hourly wage compaired to the same type of job in the private sector, in exchange for a decent fringe benifit package, like low co-pay on health insurance, vacation days, sick days, ect.
The above mention employee only gained 3 months of paid health insurance for all those unused sick days in 30 years.
I,myself have been a public service employee for 26 years, and belive it or not, it took 17 years and a promation for me to double my starting wage, I now make just over $15/hour.
We also are looking at another 8 days of no pay this comming fiscal year, and are lucky enough to be able to secdule 4 of them, the other 4 days off with out pay are assigned and they all fall on days that least effect the public.
8 days off without pay is the same as a 3% pay cut for the adverage public service employee, so that actually makes my hourly wage $14.55/hour.
Now if we start to add up all the increases in the health insurance co-pays, income tax, social security, fed tax, ect my actual hourly wage is far less.