Mayor: Change Rules for City Sick Leave
The Daily News reports today on the Nutter administration’s attempt to change city work rules, noting that city workers get a ton of paid time off. Because they’re city workers.
Look no further than the city of Philadelphia, where the typical municipal worker gets almost 50 days of paid leave and uses an average 38 days per year – more than the average state or local government employee and far more than private-sector workers, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Most city workers get paid for 11 holidays, up to 15 sick days, two to three weeks of vacation and other days for funerals and administrative leave. Longtime employees can get up to five weeks of vacation and 20 sick days. Police officers get a day off for their birthdays.
Police get off for their birthdays! That is the most incredible perk. The police union did a good job in negotiations in that sense, at least. The paper also notes city workers are off for Good Friday.
That city workers have good jobs with decent benefits is not new information. That Philadelphia’s government spends more money on something — workers, in this case — than other places isn’t either. But it does pose a more stark contrast now that more private sector workers are contractors who don’t have sick days, or vacation, at all. This makes a lot of people angry — “my tax dollars!” they cry — but I’m kind of enthused that at least some full-time employees are getting decent benefits from an employer in 2014. (I’ve been a content freelancer since 2009.)
The DN‘s Sean Collins Walsh and Jenny DeHuff write that the Nutter administration wants to change the rules to ban workers from collecting overtime on weeks when they’ve taken sick days and worked fewer than 40 hours. Millions of dollars in savings are promised.
