There is nothing more fun, as the year staggers to an end, to do that traditional review (now that Christmas is safely past and no one is looking to see if you have been naughty or nice) of the previous year, about to be safely behind us.
From an industrial relations point of view, human resource stakeholders will prepare to make that usual curious ritual of wiping clean all staff absenteeism records and starting every employee’s entitlement calculation anew in January.
There is a difference between an eligibility to paid days absence from work to an entitlement to such leave, such as during a public holiday. This should be made clear at the time of the annual review and should be reflected in the employment contract or company policy, as may be required by the accounts department, for budgeting reasons.
For the sake of conjecture, let us say the eligibility allocation is a total of 14 days, including absences from full-time work other than public holidays, which are statutory.
They can include personal, bereavement, emergency, exam, casual or business leave for one thing or another.
Assuming the total number of eligible paid "off" days is 14 annually plus the 16 statutory ones, theoretically making a total of 30. The employee’s record will be checked by the HR department to see how many days the individual being examined had taken during the year and how many days they have left.
I was asked one year by a new person in an HR department, who called up to ask if an employee could reserve sick leave in advance. When I asked what that was for, was it to undergo a scheduled operation? She replied, “No. He wants to take all his sick leave in November this year to go shopping in New York.”
I still have not got over that one. It is a reflection of the entitlement culture that has developed in TT.
Paid leave is like a bank account according to that concept, but there is a difference. A benefit is only an entitlement if the reason for it is present and verifiable. Unless you can prove that you are going to be certifiably ill in November, you cannot book sick leave for those months in advance. Bereavement leave is an entitlement in most organisations, but only if a listed relative has died. In a bank, if $14 is deposited at the beginning of the year and no dollars are withdrawn throughout that year, and $14 is deposited again at the beginning of a new year, the depositor will have $28. But it does not work that way with employee benefits except in the public service where untaken vacation leave in senior categories accumulates, and leave earned at $50 a waged hour when an employee begins is then valued upon retirement at $200 a waged hour. In the private sector, most HR policies have a cap on vacation leave. Either you take it when scheduled or forfeit it unless the inability to take the leave when scheduled is by the request of the organisation for business reasons.
In employment contracts, what has evolved is that no matter how many days of paid sick leave you took last year, even if you took the full a
