After an audit released in October 2006 revealed alarmingly small amounts of sick leave usage among faculty, the University of Wisconsin System has established a committee to look into the issue.

According to the audit, “In 2005, 45.2 percent of all UW System employees who earned sick leave — including 4,975 faculty, 5,756 academic staff, and 613 limited appointees — reported using none.”

“Right now we are looking at how we monitor it and account for it,” said Randy Ryder, secretary of the University of Wisconsin-Miwaukee.

Faculty in the UW System can accumulate up to 12 sick days a year. Then at the time of retirement, they can count their total number of collected sick days and multiply that by their final hourly salary.

That amount can be used as part of an employee trust fund that pays the yearly premium for the retired individual, which comes out to around $8,000 to $13,000, depending on the plan. When the employee goes on Medicare at age 65 the premium goes down significantly.

“If you don’t have sick leave, there is no insurance,” said Ryder, who is on the UW System Fringe Benefit Committee.

Ryder said some of the problems include each campus having its own system for recording sick days and some faculty consistently not reporting sick days.

Another problem Ryder said is colleague coverage, which is when a professor has another colleague cover a class if they are unable to attend and then it doesn’t come off of sick leave.

“At UWM most faculty will teach class when they are sick,” Ryder said.

It was this audit that primed an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel into accumulation of sick leave for retirement benefits, which is in the process of becoming void as a bill was recently proposed in the Wisconsin State Senate.

According to Wisconsin State Senate Bill 5, which was introduced Jan. 9, “No member of the legislature may accumulate unused sick leave from year to year in his or her sick leave account.”

However, Jay Risch, legislative assistant for Sen. Alberta Darling (D-Shorewood), said the way the bill is written now there is no elimination of sick leave accumulation for any other state employees including those in the UW System.

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