The state's roughly 17,600 rank-and-file workers took more than 1.6 million hours of paid sick leave during the 2024 budget year, according to a State Personnel Office report.
That's up from about 1.4 million hours in 2022 and roughly 1.1 million hours during the 2021 fiscal year.
Labor union leaders said Friday the uptick in sick leave is likely linked to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's decision in 2022 to rescind a remote work policy adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"People are using sick leave now that we don't have telework," said Megan Green , the president of the local Communications Workers of America union.
Linsey Hurst , the union's vice president, said she was forced to use up nearly all of her accrued sick leave in recent months after contracting COVID-19 and another serious virus.
Under the remote work system, she said she probably could have resumed working again more quickly.
"Everyone reacts differently to having someone coughing in the office than they used to," Hurst said in an interview.
However, State Personnel Director Dylan Lange said Friday he was not sure whether the back-to-the-office mandate prompted the uptick in sick leave usage.
He said the increase could also be due to a policy change during the 2020 budget year that allows state employees to accrue 4 hours of sick leave per pay period — up from 3.69 hours previously — for a total of 104 hours per year.
"If you have more, you're going to use more," Lange told the Journal.
Overall, the cost of the sick leave taken by New Mexico state employees last year was about $51.3 million, according to the annual SPO compensation report released last month.
That's nearly double the cost from three years ago, when the cost of sick leave totaled $25.7 million.
The Lujan Grisham administration announced in November 2022 it would be ending the remote work policy adopted during the pandemic and bringing employees who had been allowed to work from home back to the office.
The back-to-the-office mandate took effect in February 2023 , despite warnings from labor union leaders it could lead to a mass exodus of state employees.
Despite the approval of pay raises for state workers in each of the last seven years, the number of rank-and-file employees, or those subject to the state's classified employment system, has remained largely flat in recent years and some state agencies have struggled to lower stubbornly high vacancy rates.
Currently, the average annual base salary for classified employees in New Mexico is $66,976, according to the SPO report. But the total compensation increases to $108,607 when health insurance, pension contributions and other benefits are factored in.
Meanwhile, state employees are also able to cash out up to 120 hours of accrued sick leave once per year at half their usual pay rate, though only accrued sick leave in excess of 600 hours is eligible for such a payout.
A larger amount of accrued sick leave can be paid out upon an employee's retirement.
©2025 the Albuquerque Journal, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
