How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA • Hacker News Board

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#31

Post by michaelochurch » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:00 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #20

It's completely insane that US doesn't have unlimited sick leave like EU does. It's just backwards and ridiculous - if someone is ill, then they are ill, what if they don't have any sick leave left? You fire them? I literally can't stomach this. When I was little I always thought I would emigrate to the States to work - now I would pay not to go.

Outside of the Valley and New York, where there's less competition for talent, there are many companies that deduct sick days from vacation. This allows them to say that they offer 15 days (which, by US standards, is about average) of "PTO" in recruiting when it's actually less.

When companies pull that shit, you see people getting a lot sicker, because people come into the office when they should be staying home. The month of February becomes a constant, never-ending cold.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#32

Post by tragomaskhalos » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:00 PM UTC

In the UK our [pm]aternity leave allowance is not exactly enlightened, but even so this left me open-mouthed. Scandinavian readers or readers from other countries that actually bother to look after their workers properly must be utterly incredulous at your treatment.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#33

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:00 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #8

Pretty much every country in the world, both 'first-world' and poor countries, has it better than USA in this regard. Let this serve as a warning for young (age-with-a-potential-to-have-a-family) people who might be tempted to relocate to California - you have to ask for a significant premium in salary, since even in good companies (the OP lists multiple items where her job is considered 'above average') you're simpl…

Yup.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnDi8KlIIAA750F.png

US provides zero weeks paid maternity leave. Pakistan provides 12. Venezuela manages 18. Canada does 50.

Per Wikipedia, the US joins Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Liberia as the only countries to not provide paid parental leave of any kind.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#34

Post by maerF0x0 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

shawabawa3 wrote: post #24

I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre. What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed? For comparison, this is how sick leave works in the uk: https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

IIRC many employers will stop paying you, then it starts to be a "short term" disability. And then you go through that process, which often includes X days unpaid as a sort of "deductible"

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#35

Post by eksith » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #7

There should a name and shame on this one. What is the university, and what does it think it is doing?

Author info at the end says "Karen W. is a Duke City denizen..." I'm not sure if that's misdirection, but "Duke City" is another name for Albuquerque, NM.

Edit: This is interesting. Not saying it's University of New Mexico, but it is in Albuquerque and this includes a reference to her exact phrase "pregnancy or prenatal care" : http://policy.unm.edu/university-policies/3000/3440.html

And, on their FAQ under #21: http://hr.unm.edu/benefits/fmla.php#faqs ... Mentions "serious medical condition"

As well as their contract : http://hr.unm.edu/docs/labor-relations/united-staff-unm-(usu... mentions "pregnancy or prenatal care"

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#36

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

shawabawa3 wrote: post #24

I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre. What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed? For comparison, this is how sick leave works in the uk: https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

> I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre.

Agreed. Companies here in the US are pretty stingy with them, too, causing people to come to work sick where they get everyone else sick too.

> What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed?

You stop getting paid and can be fired if the company wishes.

Some companies are subject to FMLA, which protects your job for 12 weeks of unpaid sick leave. Its requirements rule out small businesses and new employees, though:

> In order to be eligible for FMLA leave, an employee must have been at the business at least 12 months, and worked at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#37

Post by zrail » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #20

It's completely insane that US doesn't have unlimited sick leave like EU does. It's just backwards and ridiculous - if someone is ill, then they are ill, what if they don't have any sick leave left? You fire them? I literally can't stomach this. When I was little I always thought I would emigrate to the States to work - now I would pay not to go.

Yes. When I was sick* I managed to work part time and use banked sick and vacation hours all the way through, but it was rough. If I had been unable to work at all I would have had to invoke short term disability, which iirc lasted six weeks. After that, I would have been fired. I had worked for the company for less than six months so I was unable to invoke FMLA at all.

These days I'm independent and have a very large cash buffer in case something else happens. Planning with cash is way easier than trying to negotiate giant employer leave policies, in my experience.

*I was diagnosed with a very treatable form of cancer in November 2012.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#38

Post by ep103 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

atonse wrote: post #4

Few things make my blood boil more than people that robotically say things like "It's the policy" with the kind of compassion and empathy that a robot would show, and then go about their business without a care in the world.

This is what edmund burke meant when he said "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," and Arendt meant when she coined the term "The banality of evil."

But I always thought it was put best by some blogger I read years ago. They said that in the fantasy or religious worlds, evil is something that just exists so corporeally that it might as well be a noun. An evil rock is evil by definition.

But in the real world, such things don't exist. Evil is not a state of being or can be encapsulated in an object. The closest definition to evil that can be defined from a real world viewpoint, is the undertaking of action that is done (usually out of selfishness) at the known expense of others.

Anyway, that's exactly what you are reacting to. That's objective evil. And not to go full godwin, but our society has had large public trials where we collectively decided that simply acting in accordance with one's job is not a moral defense.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#39

Post by minimax » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

At this point, the male students would nod and go on about their days, and the female grad students would stick around in an increasingly panicked state to ask about that whole saving annual and sick leave thing, since their contracts don’t include leave.

I was 100% like the male students until fairly recently when my girlfriend and I started having serious conversations about having children. The conversation was something like this. her: "What does your employer offer for maternity leave?" me: "lol idk." And then I got a pretty stern look. In the US the only legal guarantee you get is that you can leave for 12 weeks unpaid and you'll probably still have a job when you get back. There is zero guaranteed paid leave. It's completely shameful and it's a stone age policy compared to the rest of the Western world [1]. It's also something I think the typical HN reader hasn't spent much time thinking about so I'm glad to see this on the front page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#40

Post by jnsaff2 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #33

PeterisP wrote: post #8

Pretty much every country in the world, both 'first-world' and poor countries, has it better than USA in this regard. Let this serve as a warning for young (age-with-a-potential-to-have-a-family) people who might be tempted to relocate to California - you have to ask for a significant premium in salary, since even in good companies (the OP lists multiple items where her job is considered 'above average') you're simpl…

Yup. http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnDi8KlIIAA750F.png US provides zero weeks paid maternity leave. Pakistan provides 12. Venezuela manages 18. Canada does 50. Per Wikipedia, the US joins Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Liberia as the only countries to not provide paid parental leave of any kind.

Estonia has 78 weeks of paid Maternity OR Paternity leave, parents can choose which one stays home and gets to take care of the baby.