1. Sick Leave in the Public/Civil Service runs over a rolling four year period. There are limits where one can reach Half Pay or Nil Rate of Pay within that 4 year period. In fact management can refuse to pay any sick leave if there are reasons to support this. Brendan's thoughts above are not true; but to be fair there are misconceptions especially on fora such as AAM.
2. "Make sure you use up your sick leave before the end of the year . . ." Another untruth. Sick Leave (as I already pointed out) is read back over four year rolling period. Four Year Rolling Period = Read back from today say 21st November 2018 to 21st November 2014. The Calendar Year is not a Rolling Year. Even in certain circumstances the Four Year Rolling Period can be extended. There are no Public/Civil Service grades exempt from the 4 year readback. The terms of the 4 Year Readback are enforced stringently. Not to do so would be a serious offence.
3. "It's your turn to take sick leave this week" - I worked for over 47 years in the Public Service and for most of these I acted as a trade union representative (elected yearly) and I never head anybody advising of somebody's "turn" to take sick leave.
4. Purple makes an interesting point i.e. a Union Rep advising somebody to take sick leave. This can happen not only by a Union Rep, but also from Management. If somebody turns up for work in a hospital and he/she appears to be sick. Depending on the illness the employee might not be allowed take up duty in case of transferring his/her sickness to patients or other members of staff. This makes complete sense. Why should a hospital worker be allowed to contaminate patients or other members of staff. It does not have to be a hospital either. If somebody is obviously carrying some kind of transferable illness, it might not be good practice to allow that person to possibly contaminate others. There is such a thing as Compulsory Sick Leave (again this is countable within the Rolling Four Year Rule). However, Mr Purple might not be referring to what I have just written.
5. Hospital Health Care workers who are attacked by patients (unusual, but not unknown) may have to take sick leave as a result of the assault. Three months of such sick leave would not be counted and would be at Full Pay irrespective of the Four Year Rule. Please Note:- Health Care workers must use much "discretion" before even defending themselves from some patients in certain situations. If recovery of such an assault is over two days, then the employee would be expected to resume work on the "third" day.
Most of the allegations regarding sick leave which I hear from many, I take with a grain of salt. Talk is cheap. Furthermore, all absences of more than 2 consecutive days must be certified by a Qualified Medical Practitioner (a doctor). Seven days sick leave (uncertified) are allowed over a two rolling year period. Doctor's don't hand out too many false Sick Certificates and if they do, they leave themselves open to investigation. Sick Leave Regulations and consequences are enforced within the Civil and Public Service. Usually, sick certificates from doctors may not exceed seven days at a time. Exceptions to this would be serious illnesses where monthly medical certificates are acceptable.
The foregoing is just a general indication of the everyday processing of sick leave within the Civil/Public Service. There are exceptions and if I caused any confusion, please forgive. Please feel free to question anything I wrote.
But, to get back to the original question:- You accept promotion or a transfer to another area or by open competition, you do carry your sick leave history with you. You don't start afresh.
Lep.