Irony

We're having a debate in Faculty Senate about sick leave. The state has a policy where unused sick leave can be taken out at retirement in the form of dollars towards health care premiums. If you work for the state for a long time, and don't take much sick leave, this can be quite a few dollars.

The problem is that faculty don't take sick leave. Not never, but not as much as other state employees. So the legislature is afraid that they are getting ripped off. They want to reduce and/or eliminate sick leave for faculty, and our job, as a representative body, is to explain why that's not necessary.

In my opinion, the big reason why faculty take fewer sick days than other employees is because they make up the small stuff. If an hourly employee has a 3:00 dentist appointment, they clock out at 2:30 and probably don't come back, and never really make up those hours. So they take sick leave. If a faculty member has a 3:00 dentist appointment, they will probably come back later, or work extra the next day, or grade papers all weekend, to the point that they don't feel they owe anybody anything. They only take sick leave when they are sick enough to be out for several days at a time, or more.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure many other types of employees work more than the standard 40 hours, and I'm sure there are plenty of faculty here and at any university that don't do as much work as they could. But I'd say, in general, faculty work so much more than 40 hours that making them account for a couple of hours at the dentist is just penny-ante.

And the irony? This discussion took place on a day when I'll put in something like 14 hours. I came in at 7:00 this morning, and I'm giving an evening exam. It's 8:30 pm and I'm still waiting for the last five students to finish. OK, so I'm not working real hard right now, but it was still a long, long day.