To want to ban all outsourcing , tendering and rediscover the joys of institutional cohesion?

It applies to anyone working in a hospital who comes into contact with patients so not just clinical staff

My son works on a psychiatric ward, so will phone in and check first. He has been in to work with the remains of a cold if he is dosed up, not sneezing and is scrupulous about hygiene. He wouldn't do meds, either.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2395642/Ryanair-sacks-pilot-spoke-TV-documentary-safety-fears-gross-misconduct.html

I know Ryanair operates in Eire, but it is certainly in the EU!

I have just signed the petition about zero hours contracts. A slightly different abuse of workers - my grandson works in construction and has been forced to become self-employed which is of no help to him but enables his employer to avoid many responsibilities. I wish HMRC would clamp down on this practice. It is fine for highly paid employees of the BBC who can claim various expenses, but is just one more way for businesses to exploit other workers.

I signed that, too. Ryanair's CEO might yet come up with another of his plausible explanations. I'd be interested to hear it!

Nurses in my family too. I also worked in an HR office in a hospital for a while. Favourite story re absence was that 2 members of catering staff kept taking time off at the same time. He very unattractive middle aged man and she attractive young woman. But they were indeed taking time off to have an affair.
Attendance/absenteeism an interesting phenomenon that varies a lot. Cultural norms can spring up in some workplaces e.g. my example above of the car workers who all thought it was their right to take their "entitlement" of 30 paid sick days even if they were perfectly healthy. The contract staff working next to them have a very very low rate of absence.
Small businesses have a better attendance rate than big ones. Private companies better than public. As a school governor had to put continual pressure on head to keep managing the attendance of staff and pupils. Surprising how it improves if you set tough targets for managers and they actively manage absence.

There are certainly tough absence monitoring policies in place in the public sector now jess. These are applied consistently and with a complete lack of common sense. For example, after my return to work following three weeks sick leave after my mother's death, I was asked by my manager whether the absence was likely to be repeated. And yes, I did reply that I thought my mother was unlikely to die again.

This was 15 years ago and things are even stricter now. Staff who are off sick for genuine reasons are in real fear for their jobs.

When I took over a large remedial teaching service, I found that the former head had allowed things to slide and at least one teacher was taking her 'allowed' sick days off every month. Others were claiming travel expenses which were unjustified. One joked that she was very popular at the schools she visited because she cut short her teaching sessions in order to brew tea for the staff. I had to make myself unpopular for a time with the 'old guard' but I thought it was my job to make the service deliver to the children who needed it.
Where management in either the public or private sector is inefficient or corrupt, the answer is to replace it and make things work properly, not to simply hand over to some profit-making body, which may be just as inefficient.

nightowl some managers just don't get it do they. Unfortunately, in schools at least, they have training in something they call "leadership" but have little training in the basics of management e.g. how to manage absence. My experience is recent though (gave up being chair of govs 12 months ago) and we certainly had to keep leaning on managers to keep managing attendance. They didn't want to do this and if governor pressure lifted they would stop spending time on this.

But JessM that's just one school. I don't think you can generalise from one example. I will give another example of a friend of mine who was HoD in a big school and whose attendance was poor. She had breast cancer. She was aggressively 'managed' and three weeks before her death ten years ago was ordered to attend occupational health to be assessed. Disgraceful, but I wouldn't say that was typical because I don't have sufficient knowledge.

I'm replying to nightowl's generalisation micelf with an example to counter it.
I agree that is terrible, harrassing someone to go to occupational health at that stage in their illness. Probably had not done the bit of "managing sickness" where they keep in touch with the sick person. All this having been said... public employees like teachers and nurses have fantastic terms and conditions compared to most private sector workers. When I had breast cancer I worked for a utility that had public sector-type conditions and I was able to take 6 months off without a qualm. I was extremely fortunate. There are of course many employers in both public and private that are compassionate and do their best to bend rules.
But there are a lot of people that take the mick. Most irritating are the people who get in a bit of trouble at work, they maybe have a disciplinary pending or had their feathers ruffled by a formal warning. The predictably go to the GP and ask to be signed off on "stress" and disappear for months, thus putting disciplinary measures on hold. And get paid to sulk at home out of the public purse.

Problems of abuse regarding absenteeism and managing this in a humane and effective way comes from intelligent management. Each case is different and what none of it needs is the blunt tool of outsourcing , producing a whole series of extra layers in which to lose your service/company's purpose / mission ( mid-80's jargon ). Just a thought . I have been employed in the real world at various times during my career , and met management who instinctively knew just how to build good working relationships ( celebrating tgeir strengths but working on their weaknesses , and those that thought management was a device given to them to enforce their tunnel vision.

Agree with you otw. A manager who knows how to play fair, is interested in her team, allows for personal stresses, and shows she can be flexible will get more out of her workers than some disinterested company that doesn't even know the workforce, applies back to work interviews like a punishment, and shifts people around to suit their poorly managed arrangements. I have seen too many TUPE'd and private workers going off with stress or falling asleep on the job whilst doing overtime covering for other stressed out workers, because their money-grabbing bosses don't have any investment in ensuring they balance work and home life. It was odd to work alongside private companies whose workers were not in a union, and who always wanted copies of our public sector whistle-blowing policy.

I am afraid there is still widespread fraud in the EU. Questions are still unanswered about Neil Kinnock's stewardship:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/1402096/Kinnock-EU-whistleblower-hung-out-to-dry.html

I believe police officers are the most likely group to take early retirement in order to avoid disciplinary procedures.

I am sure we would all like to see fairness and good management, but it seems to me that outsourcing is not the way to achieve them.

Heartily agree Greatnan, pity no-one's listening .

Sometimes outsourcing can be done in response to failure in management e.g. the car plant example.