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EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

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Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#121

Post by Cederfjard »

mikem170 wrote: post #53
matsemann wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: Sick days shouldn't be a pool at all. In Norway there's X amount of sick days one can use without any hassle (all paid), to use any more all you have to do is show a doctors note. If you have to use more than Y amount of days (chronic illness, a more serious thing or something), the government will temporarily take on the responsibility of paying the worker's wages. I don't think people should be punishe…

Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? Many people want to have as many days off as they can. If so, you could be in the same situation, call in saying your sick to use all your days then really get sick at the end of the year. If the answer is no, perhaps that is due to cultural differences. It's my impression that folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.

Sure, it happens. I don't think it's to a degree where the cons outweigh the pros.

In Sweden, the first day of sick leave is unpaid, after that it's very similar to Norway.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#122

Post by germinalphrase »

donatj wrote: post #71
germinalphrase wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or require more than 3-5 sick days. Hardly seems adequate.

Like give me three weeks of sick days. And no vacation. And you can call it PTO if you want, sounds great.

I don’t disagree. In general, I believe employees should have more control over their hours worked.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#123

Post by _wldu »

vfc1 wrote: post #106

You got to admit that the EU at least has the courage to take some controversial measures in the best interest of their people. I can't see this soon enough, I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing. I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. Most ma…

I agree. Working from home (due to covid) has become "working all the time" for many of my friends and family.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#124

Post by tcldr »

vfc1 wrote: post #106

You got to admit that the EU at least has the courage to take some controversial measures in the best interest of their people. I can't see this soon enough, I have family that answer emails in vacation all the time, that get phone calls like its nothing. I know people that connect everyday from home to the office network to work one or two hours (extra) otherwise it's impossible to keep up with the workload. Most ma…

> You got to admit that the EU at least has the courage to take some controversial measures in the best interest of their people.

Do you think it's a coincidence they get such a bad press?

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#125

Post by pc86 »

mchusma wrote: post #78
MereInterest wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the same lines on sick days, I think it should be forbidden for employers to merge vacation days and sick days into "PTO". Merging the pools gives an incentive for people to come to work while ill. For example, suppose somebody has 3 PTO days remaining for the year, and they are all earmarked for Christmas vacation with family. If that person catches the flu in early December, their options are (a) cancel Chris…

I think in practice they are merged to avoid incentives to lie. Every org I have worked at that had separate pools there was widespread lying about being sick. Nobody really asked or cared, so in effect they are the same thing. In practice lying was incentivized, and managers that didn't want to be lied to just adopted the policy that your sick days were yours to take for any reason. I don't think this is something t…

This is why I think a better system is 1) employees get n hours of PTO; 2) sick days don't use PTO; 3) sick days are not explicitly tracked or counted.

If you're not completing enough work because you're abusing pseudo-unlimited-PTO-via-sick-days, or you magically get a cold every Friday before a week off, that gets handled by your manager directly. But it doesn't make sense to penalize the 99% of employees who are responsible and honest.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#126

Post by logifail »

d33 wrote: post #105

> To date, workers in Germany can only write off work costs at home if they can prove they have one room in their household dedicated solely to work. How does one prove they don't use the room for anything else? Webcam recording throughout the month? Also, this kind of deduction favors the rich as the poor can't afford having one room just for that.

> this kind of deduction favors the rich

...and/or favours the educated: if you have to go to the bother of knowing about this allowance _and filing a tax return_ to claim. In Germany many (most?) employees pay their income taxes automagically via payroll deductions and so aren't required to submit an annual return.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#127

Post by Delk »

mikem170 wrote: post #53
matsemann wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better: Sick days shouldn't be a pool at all. In Norway there's X amount of sick days one can use without any hassle (all paid), to use any more all you have to do is show a doctors note. If you have to use more than Y amount of days (chronic illness, a more serious thing or something), the government will temporarily take on the responsibility of paying the worker's wages. I don't think people should be punishe…

Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? Many people want to have as many days off as they can. If so, you could be in the same situation, call in saying your sick to use all your days then really get sick at the end of the year. If the answer is no, perhaps that is due to cultural differences. It's my impression that folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.

The difference is probably at least partially cultural, but probably not due to some kind of a single factor such as "responsibility".

I'm not from Norway, but other European countries also have systems that are more or less similar.

Where I live, I think most adults would find it socially rather unacceptable to abuse a sick leave, at least on a regular or systematic basis. Getting caught would be rather embarrassing. So there's a social stigma against abusing the system. (That's probably not true of everyone, and there's always somebody abusing the system, but I believe the majority would find it socially unacceptable.)

Another related difference might be that at least in Nordic countries, people place more trust in the system, and the balance between collectivism and individualism tends more towards the former. If the system is seen as more trustworthy and as more of a mutual thing, as opposed to something that everybody's trying to game anyway, cheating the system is then also less acceptable. It would be like stealing from a common coffer. (Of course not everybody sees it that way, but I think there's more of a tendency towards that in the culture. And practically nobody who's not entirely naive trusts the system unconditionally, nor should they. But many ways of gaming the system for your own benefit are less acceptable to most people than they might be in a different culture.)

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#128

Post by ghaff »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #64
mikem170 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people pretend to be sick to use up their X days? Many people want to have as many days off as they can. If so, you could be in the same situation, call in saying your sick to use all your days then really get sick at the end of the year. If the answer is no, perhaps that is due to cultural differences. It's my impression that folks in Norway are more responsible in many regards compared to Americans.

That's a pretty sweeping generalization to think that the answer is either "yes" or "no". Of course some people will lie and cheat their way through life, so yes, some people will pretend to be sick in order to use up their X sick days. And yes, we could make it harder to cheat by making rules, such as always requiring a doctor's notice for sick days. Is the problem large enough that you need to prevent people from c…

Historically, when sick and vacation were more typically separate pools, the answer was definitely it depended. It's not hard to find studies showing that Mondays and Fridays saw a disproportionate number (i.e. not just 20%) of single day sick days. And, I'm sure, the pattern wasn't spread evenly across everyone.

Personally, although I've fortunately had much need to take an appreciable number of sick days, I favor them being separate because as others note, especially with a relatively limited pool of PTO days, there's a lot of incentive to work sick.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#129

Post by MereInterest »

donatj wrote: post #96
Blahah wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a reasonable policy at all. If you are sick for weeks you have no vacation time. That's bad for everyone involved.

I'm pretty sure the people ITT are going to disagree with me, but vacation is a luxury, sick days are a necessity. If I missed weeks of work I wouldn't also take a vacation that year regardless.

Interesting axiomatic basis for your argument, and thank you for explaining where we are seeing differences. You are correct that I would disagree with you on that, and place both as necessities. Sick days are necessary for short-term physical and mental health. Vacation days are necessary for long-term mental health.

If you missed weeks of work from an illness, those weeks aren't time where you could see family, see the world, relax, and be human. They don't satisfy the same long-term needs as fully-disconnected vacation time satisfies.

Re: EU pushes for 'right to disconnect' from work at home

#130

Post by brnt »

MereInterest wrote: post #73
brnt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pool of sickdays? What the? Is there a pool of cancer days too?

I share your shock, and try to keep myself from feeling that the current situation in the US is either normal or ethical. To answer your question, yes, recovery from cancer would could from the pool of sick days in most places in the US. If the recovery takes more than the pool of sick days (7-9 days per year, somehow and perversely being different on average by seniority[0]), then all remaining recovery time is unpa…

I'm... stunned. I knew you guys had it bad with (typically) less than half the holidays that we get here, but this is a whole other level.
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