Sick day dilemma

DH has been struggling with an URTI for the last couple of weeks. The antibiotics are not working, and though she could go to work as she is not feverish, her body is crying "Please take me back to bed"

DH is reluctant to take a sickie. She likes her job, being assistant co-ordinator of a team which provides an important service to the public. Due to chronic under-staffing and under-resourcing in the Public Service, there is a lot of pressure on everyone in her team to do their jobs, and on her boss especially as he coordinates the whole shebang. DH considers him to be a hero, and hates to leave the team in the lurch. Nevertheless it is scandalous that our important services are being run on shoestrings. DH has worked in the past year at several government departments, a politician's electorate officer, and a university department, and its always the same story.

The reason none of these workplaces collapse is because everyone who works there is giving 150% of their time and energy, in overtime, in patience under extreme duress, even to the extent of dipping into their own pockets to pay for things like office supplies, phone calls, taxis etc.

There is, needless to say, no slack in the system for people to get sick.

DH gets paid by the hour. Given that she is on a subsistence income, she needs to think very carefully about whether she can afford to take a rest if she is not actually at death's door.

While temp rates are meant to yield a higher rate than permanent rates for the same job to cover the loss of sick pay, that is simply not true anymore, if it ever was. DH is still being paid $30 an hour as a project officer, same as she was 10 years ago.

Oh, except that last week she managed to extract a $5 an hour increase from her employer, who, due to chronic understaffing, insufficient funding for proper administrative backup, is dependant on her.

Under the circumstances, she has been slinking around ever since, feeling like a blackmailer, and wondering if she deserves it. (Another one of unspoken pressures of individual bargaining, btw). Not conducive to the feelings of high-self esteem that we know are necessary for a strong immune system.

In short, between the guilt of letting the team down, worry about how to pay for next week's bills with a loss of a day's wage, and what if she doesn't feel better tomorrow????? and the time taken for unburdening herself on this blog, which is a better and more healing outlet than lying in bed and weeping, it is now 10 oclock, DH has finally taken the decision to have a day off.

And so to bed...

Misery

D-DAY: DH begins to pay rent at 30% of gross salary

Net salary received today (weekly). . . . 618.00
Rent + water due today (fortnightly). . . 634.00
Going out backwards by . . . . . . . . . . . 16.00

Only art and literature can express DH's feelings now.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure rent nineteen nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure rent twenty pounds ought and six, result
misery. (Charles Dickens' Micawber Principle)

Picasso: Weeping woman

DREADING next week

DH is DREADING next week.

From then on, nearly half her take home pay will be rent. As she is paid weekly, but rent is fortnightly, this means that every second week, she will have between $30 - $40 a week left after rent.

That's when TEIS, the 3 month grace period ends during which tenants who have not worked for 12 months pay the the old subsidised rate, to give them a chance to catch up. It's a DOH version of Centrelink's Working Credit Scheme.

DH appreciates how fortunate she is compared to renters in the private market of course. Let us hope that populist politicians will not use this to divide and rule by siccing the lower classes, (which now includes the middle class) against each other to fight for housing which should not be this scarce in a wealthy country like Australia.

Here's another thing. She can't afford her medications and has been razorblading them by half, which means she is not in the best of shape, and to make matters worse, she has to take a new drug which is not on the PBS, as the old one has been withdrawn from the US market for its risk of heart and lung damage. The new drug would cost her $150 a month.

Not complaining for her own sake, but as an indicator of the GODAWFUL housing, and health, mess 10 years of Howard has left for the country.