A good post Pixy but I feel I need to comment on one part though:
I am often amazed at pilots who come to work clearly sick or fatigued. When queried they express the opinion that they will be victimized for reporting unfit. In my experience that is unlikely unless they themselves have been abusing the system. Aside from that ,there are in fact many remedies to this.
Primarily, it is unprofessional and unfair to do this. Sickness, if genuine can be validated by medical practitioners giving the company a headache if this leads to disciplinary action.
Sickness that has been certified by an AME has in the past, been used as an excuse to delay a command course for an F/O. We have often heard about colleagues who are summoned for a 'chat' on the third floor about their certified sickness. When it comes to managing sickness, the company appear to be incredibly shortsighted and simply view the employee as being less productive than they should be, instead of initially considering exactly why the employee was marked sick.