Budget problems and fiscal deficits are all the rage right now with Houston being no exception. Everything from public education to essential services are feeling the low tide of the fall. For the Houston Fire Department in particular, things like retirement pay are garnering attention.
Let us begin by acknowledging the service that firefighters give the city. It is not an occupation to take lightly. With that said, no occupation should be immune from simple rules like expiring sick days.
The Houston Chronicle reported a $10 million budget shortfall in the HFD from last year, with millions of dollars of the allocated firefighting budget going to pay retirees who accumulated unused sick days, holidays and vacation days.
That’s not to say that the corporations, businesses and public sector workers don’t already have the unfair advantage when looking at the power struggle between boss and employee. But let’s be serious; there are more important matters of workplace justice than garnering money from cashing in unused sick and vacation days.
For most, sick days do not accumulate; they expire. Imagine if every worker of any occupation could simply convert their sick days and vacations into liquid assets. Imagine if everyone did so simultaneously. Chaos would ensue.
In this situation, it looks like the workers are to blame. If they were not so greedy, they could be helping to ease the monetary burden of the city of Houston.
However, you really cannot blame the firefighters; they are only taking what is expected. If the fine print hadn’t allowed this situation, then it would not have arisen. If the firefighters went into employment with the understanding that they could hoard sick days, then they cannot be held at fault, because who wouldn’t take advantage of that?
Regardless of who is to blame, there are only so many things you can do to beat around the bush before you have to step on some toes and reduce a few people’s overly large incomes. There are plenty of other public servants who retire with disproportionate pay.
Even though most of us do not run into burning buildings for a living, most of us do not get to turn our unused sick and vacation days into cash. This is a perfect example of a flaw in the city’s financial system, and one reason why the budget deficit is so sizable.
Seriously? When you work in the real world with a real family perhaps your stance will change. How can you say it's greedy for workers to "cash-in" on their sick days? Hello? It's not about cashing in anything or about being greedy. We work, we have a right to use a sick day. We give them our time, and effort!! We spend more time at the office or any other job 40hours a week than we do with our own family who comes first right?
Tammy, the article says that workers SHOULD use sick days and vacations, instead of not using them in order to get money from the accumulation of them. The fact that the firefighters are not to blame was explicit. Re-read the article.
Most places I have ever worked at never paid out sick time. The reason is you do not EARN sick leave but are given it. You are however earning vacation time which is up to you how or if you want to use it. Can a company or organization put a limit on how much you can save up in vacation time? Yes, however if you want to complain about the money trail, why not look at who set the whole deal up. The politicians catering to the unions in the case of the city.
The city will just have to pay overtime to some other firefighter who replaces a sick fighter. So have the city pay the fighter for unused sick day, or make them use their sickdays, and pay another fighter time and a half for overtime to come in and cover the shift. Another reason we save sick days is to give them to other injured fighters in the hospital that have gone through all their sick days, which happens regularly. There is alot of cancer in this profession.
In addendum, HFD Fire Fighters have to accrue 530 sick hour before you get paid for any hours. That’s roughly 4.5 years of not calling in sick. They only get paid for unused sick hours after 530. Before 1985 they had unlimited accrual. Those are the larger pensions you see in the paper. Most the finacial problems have been addressed already vacation, sickdays, the drop all chopped down in the collective bargining. The fire fighters
The Fire Fighters only had those benefits before 85 because they went 20 years without a raise. HFD is one of the largest departments in the nation, but also among the worse paid. The pension and security is all we have. Now the city is trying to take that away.
I agree 100% with Tammy. The sick days that are saved up are a benefit to the worker. A lot of companies offer a benefit like that. Some expire, some don't. However in a job like fire-fighting where there are not a lot of people lining up to apply, it is important to make the benefits more attractive to potential employees. You are complaining about people who worked long enough in the public sector to retire from it, risking their lives for yours, who earned extra pay to be used in their retirement? Good for them. One of the best parts of the American system is that hard work should pay off. These people put in their hard work—now let it pay off!