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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

#461

Post by mikem170 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #428
mikem170 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point in the conversation I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit?

> I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit? If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an emplo…

Point taken, I understand what you're saying and that plays into the mix. My next thought is that having the separate sick days with the expectation that people will only use them when needed introduces several less-than-optimal problems: 1) some employees will lie about being sick, 2) some employers won't trust their employees, interjecting the need for unnecessary dacotr's notes, etc and 3) some employees who follow the rules will resent those who don't.

Everyone getting the same combined amount of day mitigates the above, with the understanding that might be 45 PTO days instead of 30 vacation + 30 sick. This would seem to leave the problem of people who are genuinely sick for longer 15 days, under the 30+30 they'd not be dipping into their vacation days as quickly.

There will always be some number of people who run out of sick days, no matter how many you have. Maybe the policies around short-term disability should be adjusted, and the more drastic situations handled with that (requiring doctor visits, etc).

I'm currently reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, something that rings a lot of bells for me. I'll admit to having an very questioning attitude about workplace culture lately :-)

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

#462

Post by Spearchucker »

auganov wrote: post #438
tcldr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the line most of the press seem to tout – and it's that 'feeling' which has been exploited by those who see the EU as an obstacle to their regulatory goals or vision. The fact is that you get to vote for your MEP if you choose to, and they in turn for the commission. It's weird that on the one hand people say the EU "[does] whatever they please and there is no real input from anyone" and on the other h…

> and on the other have no idea about the EU parliamentary process. It is what you make it. Yes. But the problem is people have a very hard time doing that. You cannot engage with EU level politics the same way you can in a real country. All these people speak different languages. Very hard to stay engaged when you have to listen to translations. You hardly ever get the kind of engaging coverage you would for domesti…

My boy goes to a European School (schools set up for employees of the Union), because my girlfriend works for a European institution. I sit on the parents association of the school. That said -

There already is a common language and it's English. It may not be officially recognized but it's what everybody working for an EU institution uses.

Not knowing any MEPs by name is your choice and not a deficiency of the EU.

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

#463

Post by freeone3000 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #427
throwaway45349 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be on-call and still do other things -- it's not all or nothing. My workplace has tiered SLOs for on-call, some being as relaxed as O(30 minutes) for first response.

Yeah you can do other things but you're never really 'free'. You always have to be able to drop what you're doing at a moments notice. I really hate that feeling. I'd rather just be there when it's really needed.

How is that different from your current state, when you are checking your email, even on vacation?

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

#464

Post by freeone3000 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #425
lallysingh wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a family, it's more like $2500/month for healthcare.

Wow, this is literally more than I make after tax :( And I have a senior IT job at a multinational. But I suppose wages take this into account. High rent prices, healthcare etc. Otherwise people wouldn't be able to live off their wage.

Programmers can. Most people cannot.

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

#465

Post by mikem170 »

hibbelig wrote: post #192
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.

I think in the end, there is no way around trust. You have to trust the mechanic that they tighten the screws correctly. You have to trust the software developer that they write that does what it should and not something nefarious. You have to trust the salesperson that they don't lie to the customer. Yes, all of these can be checked to some extent, but it will not be possible to fully check everything.

Big companies make seem more into making inflexible processes and eliminating the variability of trust.

The people who do follow the rules are left feeling shorted by those that don't. That doesn't seem right.

I think this happens with a lot of things. The employer can say "be trustworthy" and save money across the entire pool of employees, but the employees who follow the rules have to stand by watching other who break them.

Same thing happened with marking spots in my apartment complex. They numbered the spots to go with apartments, but don't enforce it. Someone always takes my spot. According to their rules I'm supposed to park further away in the unmarked spots, or steal someone elses spot. Most people follow the rules, so the office gets less parking complaints. But now people whose spots are taken are left worse off than before.

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

#466

Post by pc86 »

leetcrew wrote: post #176
pc86 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> 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. this just sounds like a shitty situation all around. it really sucks to suspect someone / be suspected of something that can't…

I think I just didn't explain it well enough. A common refrain against unlimited/untracked sick time is that employees will abuse it to be lazy, and the only way to fix that is to either closely monitor/track sick days used, or have a pool.

My point was that if performance is an issue there are ways to address that. And if enough work is getting completed, it doesn't matter how many sick days were taken (so no need to track/have a pool).

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

#467

Post by fastball »

daxfohl wrote: post #365
fastball wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I too love it when legislation discourages people from working with others around the world. We will never achieve world peace if we let people from different timezones collaborate.

We can ease immigration policies. I don't see forcing your workforce into 24/7 mode as the correct approach to world peace.

"other countries" is exactly the problem.

In an increasingly digital world, if you can't get flexibility workers from the EU, companies will just get them from somewhere else.

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

#468

Post by mikem170 »

hibbelig wrote: post #458
mikem170 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you said "trust" I wondered who benefits, and my first thought was that the company that doesn't have to deal with the sick days is the winner. The company is trusting to come to work as many days as we physically can? How is that better than just giving everyone the same number of days to manager as sick or personal for themselves?

Well, with ten days of vacation per year, I'd be interesting in any additional time I could take off. But if you have enough (say 25), then I as an employee don't feel that I got the short end of the stick. It's also a matter of solidarity that those who can support those who can't. In this case, the healthier employees support the ones who are ill.

There's many ways the same support can be given. Why should employees have to support each other in that fashion? There's things like short-term disability that handle absences longer than whatever specific number of normal time off is provided.

According to your logic above, why don't we get 100 sick days per year instead of 10? Some people need that many, fellow employees should support them too, right?

I guess the sick vs vacation day thing becomes a more of a problem in an environment where the rule-followers see a lot rule-breakers taking advantage.

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

#469

Post by gtfoutttt »

ericd wrote: post #332
gtfoutttt wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Then the work doesn't get completed on time! That's bad management not hiring enough people, not the fault of the employee. SMH y'all IT people need a union.

Are you familiar with the mythical man month? Hiring more people might not get the same amount done as a few working really hard. That said, burnout can make working harder worse than working a sane amount. But that doesn’t fall on the employer as much as the employee.

I wasn't referring to 9 pregnant women working one month to birth a child. There are a few cases where that book's core idea does make a lot of sense.

I was referring to my 40 hours ending on Friday at 5, and not returning to work until Monday morning. If management expects more from me then they need to hire more people or lower their retirement or delivery expectations.

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