workers get sick
we FOUGHT for sick days

that we now need prove it
is a sigh how sick the system has become

perverted mate
think

your so sick..yet you mannaged to go to a docter
not to work...MATE SICK IS A RIGHT..

now made into something you gotta proove!

bit by bit
then...before you realise it

your all right
im all right
stuff you others that arnt right

cause the right
has got it wrong

The doctor's certificate is a response to the Australian sport of "chucking a sickie". I have taken 2 days sick leave in 6 years, and neither time have I been asked for a doctor's certificate.

Sick leave is a protection, not a bonus.

I actually take many more sick days when I'm NOT getting paid for them.

Lets see... Wake up, feel like going to the beach, hell I'll just ring them up and say, sorry, not coming in today. No guilt, no fanciful story required, heaps of Mondays off in a row with no repercussions. Brilliant!

I'd Love it if sick days were unpaid for Salary type jobs. You'd get the security of full time work with no gaps between contracts, and you could randomly take days off left right and centre.

I think I'd take a sick day once or twice a fortnight if I wasn't getting paid.

I could catch every day of every cricket test for a start.

SM,

So you're one of the lousy sods who comes into work and spreads Germs around. Or just the Protestant work ethic bread and dripping workhorse! Take a bow! Being sick is for weak LOSERS huh?

If you really are that healthy, you should be thankful. When kids are in DayCare they're little disease incubators, bringing home all sorts of nasties. No matter how healthy your lifestyle (Yeah right, getting enough sleep!), no matter how many vitamins, it takes some killer immune system to fend off the snot and dribble of 30 toddlers.

It was clear to me this thread would divide us along politics and industrial relations lines.
Look I think that is how we go wrong.
This should be seen as a problem, one we are tasked with solving.
First step could be listening to the link on radio National.
That Doctor was clear,as I am, some fraud takes place, RObert has it right.
The following is one such certificate, demanded and excepted by bosses.
Background,worker attends after pay has been with held, gets some thing like this and it is excepted.
Mr/Mrs Smith informs me last week/month he/she was sick at home to unwell to come to see me, for one two three days
Doctor Bill the Government thanks

Inside a worker/boss/union round table, after a workers has lost a lot of time, you will see some are best by sacking them.
But on the RTA or some other jobs a man with well over 100 sick days untaken, in very real personal trouble,and not telling any one about it, can be hounded under current law or just not paid.
Better ways exist better bosses too
Have a penalty and review , fairly conducted, of true offenders but surely stat decs can be trusted here.
60 MILLION of our dollars is worth saving, remember a stat dec proved to lie is ample reason to sack a worker.
And if its certificates? Bill the boss not us.

H,

I am very seldom sick and neither are my kids. I get the whole family vaccinated for flu, the schools also encourage vaccinations and separate sick kids where possible from the general population.

Many of the tradies use up all their sick leave, and wonder why if after a number of years they are sick for longer than the 12 days, why there is little sympathy.

SM is unlikely to ever be charged with too much understanding.
He is not standing in the rain all day
Sicky can be very different and the boss too.
In flood country 40 klm from work, isolated from town and work.
I saw two different managers of 40 plus workers.
One would ring, say stay home do not try to cross the creek take sick leave.
Another same place replaced the first.
Try to get here any way you can., no sick leave will be paid in floods!
A death? trying to get to work? If it had happened I put him on notice I would see him charged, in time the firm found as I did he was unsuited for manèging people.
I know of country blokes unwilling to let the wife know they are seeing Doctors, I have taken such to boss and explained and it has been ok.
I have seen people take in excess of 30 days every year, including every second day after pay day.
Bigotry in this matter back fires.
People unfairly forced to get that certificate are advised, once by me, to get the week off twice each year so it works in reverse for hard bosses more time off.
Why make us all pay because of a few Shadow Ministers?