With Labour Day just around the corner, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) says other provinces should follow New Brunswick’s lead and address the gap between the number of sick days taken by government employees and the taxpayers who are paying for them.

New data from Statistics Canada, specifically obtained by the CTF, shows the average government employee in NB takes 13.1 sick days off a year – far higher than the 8.7 taken by their private sector counterparts in 2012.

“Government employees apparently have no idea what it’s like to work in the real world, where sick days are taken only when you’re sick,” said Kevin Lacey, the CTF’s Atlantic  Director. “With the sick day gap between government and the rest of us now 50 per cent, it should be taxpayers who might want to lie down.”

NB government statistics, obtained through the Right To Information and Privacy Act (RTI), shows employees at the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure took the most sick days averaging 12.7 per employee, while Invest New Brunswick had the fewest at 1.8 days per employee. Unionized employees also ran up 60 per cent more sick time per employee than their non-union counterparts.

This represents about a tenth of the 90,660 government employees in NB. StatsCan’s 13.1 sick days calculation is higher because it includes personal days as well as all public sector employees from municipalities, arms length agencies such as NB Power, school boards, health authorities and federal government employees.

The CTF says other provinces should be looking to New Brunswick as an example of how to reduce the number of sick days by government employees. New Brunswick’s Human Resources Minister Troy Lifford reported to the provincial legislature that in the first quarter of 2013, the government reduced the number of sick days by 2,300 or a quarter of a day per employee. Finance Minister Blaine Higgs wants to save $20 million by 2015 by reducing the number of public employees who are off sick.

“Other provinces in Canada should be looking to New Brunswick and following their lead to address the gap between the number of sick days by government workers and the taxpayers who pay for them,” added Lacey.

Across the country, federal government employees took 17.9 days of sick leave, according to the most recent Treasury Board survey. In comparison, the most recent national report from Statistics Canada shows employees working outside of government took only 6.7 sick days in 2012.

“We have more federal government employees booking off sick on any given day than actually show up for work at General Motors and Chrysler combined,” said CTF Federal Director Gregory Thomas. “We’re facing an epidemic of sick-leave abuse amongst government employees and it needs to be stopped.”

For the CTF’s FOI request to the NB Government on total sick days, click here.

For the provincial breakdown of StatsCan’s sick day numbers, click here.