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How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

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

#231

Post by pc86 »

ropiku wrote: post #132
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

Also a EU court decided that you get sick days even if you are on holiday: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18534028

Maybe I'm too engrained in the American way of thinking, but why in the world if you are sick on Christmas (when you're already being paid while off) should you get paid again in the terms of additional sick days? It doesn't make any sense to me.

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

#232

Post by SCdF »

the_ancient wrote: post #228
minimax wrote: post #39

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 so…

Why? It was your choice to have a child why should your employer pay for it, and why should all your fellow employees that did not have children have to work harder to cover for you while you are on paid leave? I think it is selfish for new parents to demand all this time off, you were hired to do a job, do it, if you can not or unwilling to because you have made a choice to make a major change in your life then i am…

You'd hope it was because you considered your country (and the world as a whole) a community where we all help each other out, and treat each other how we'd like to be treated. The implication of "user pays" is that the rich live life basically as they always have (because costs of life events don't scale with your wage), and the poor are utterly fucked.

You may believe it's selfish for new parents to demand time off. I believe it is selfish for people who are more fortunate than others to not contribute more tax and help lift those below them when they're in need.

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

#233

Post by pc86 »

jackmaney wrote: post #145
chaostheory wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 This is the trade off we pay for lower taxes. (Yes certain states like NY and CA have higher tax rates, but they make up for it with more state benefits.)

Then that's a horrible, shitty fucking trade.

Well spoken, thank you.

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

#234

Post by sosborn »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #170
sosborn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try to find more reasonable employers. Believe it not they do exist in the U.S.

It amazes me that people think this should be at the employers' discretion.

It isn't that I think it should be at the employer's discretion, it's that there are better companies to work for out there and we should all endeavor to work for them if our current employer is actively screwing us over.

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

#235

Post by Nate75Sanders »

pc86 wrote: post #231
ropiku wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a EU court decided that you get sick days even if you are on holiday: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18534028

Maybe I'm too engrained in the American way of thinking, but why in the world if you are sick on Christmas (when you're already being paid while off) should you get paid again in the terms of additional sick days? It doesn't make any sense to me.

If you can turn that paid holiday into a vacation day and take a sick day instead, that's awesome. It basically works like this:

"We planned for you to have some time to recharge by giving you holidays and vacation days. You got sick? Can't recharge while you're sick, so that's a sick day. Take a REAL vacation day later when you're well."

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

#236

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

NateDad wrote: post #203
cdoxsey wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. (1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required (2) The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system (3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them. FWIW most tech companies…

Poor people deserve to have kids, too.

Who's going to pay for their kids?

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

#237

Post by cdoxsey »

bronbron wrote: post #200
cdoxsey wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. (1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required (2) The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system (3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them. FWIW most tech companies…

> Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies. > Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them. Did you even read the article? These people can obviously afford to have children. They can't afford to become unemployed because they had children. Short of being independentl…

> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

Because banking on the generosity of the government works so well for people. I'm suggesting precisely the opposite of this. Rather than everyone seeing themselves as victims maybe they should take some responsibility for their life choices.

> Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're raising a child.

Not true. Many women choose not to work to raise children.

> Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately affecting women.

Sure, where "this" means "reality". It's not a corporation's fault that women give birth and men don't.

Someone has to pay for all this stuff.

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

#238

Post by lutorm »

pc86 wrote: post #231
ropiku wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a EU court decided that you get sick days even if you are on holiday: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18534028

Maybe I'm too engrained in the American way of thinking, but why in the world if you are sick on Christmas (when you're already being paid while off) should you get paid again in the terms of additional sick days? It doesn't make any sense to me.

... because vacation is for recharging your batteries, which you don't do if you're ill?

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

#239

Post by the_ancient »

SCdF wrote: post #232
the_ancient wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It was your choice to have a child why should your employer pay for it, and why should all your fellow employees that did not have children have to work harder to cover for you while you are on paid leave? I think it is selfish for new parents to demand all this time off, you were hired to do a job, do it, if you can not or unwilling to because you have made a choice to make a major change in your life then i am…

You'd hope it was because you considered your country (and the world as a whole) a community where we all help each other out, and treat each other how we'd like to be treated. The implication of "user pays" is that the rich live life basically as they always have (because costs of life events don't scale with your wage), and the poor are utterly fucked. You may believe it's selfish for new parents to demand time off…

I believe both are selfish, I also do not believe it is any place for government to be involved.

If an employer wants to have 1 day, or 365 days off that is up to them, that is part of your compensation package you should evaluate when you agree to take a job.

Just like I believe it is a responsibility of those with money to help those with out. That does not translate in to supporting the use of government violence to forcing people to give up money, nor does that mean I support the creating of terribly inefficient government programs to manage, regulate, or dispense said benefits or money

As to the topic at hand, if a private business owner desires to offer their employee time off for child bearing more power to them, it is not the business of government however to force that on said business owner.

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

#240

Post by ska »

Domenic_S wrote: post #143
minimax wrote: post #39

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 so…

"Zero paid leave" is not quite true, it's left to the individual States to decide that. CA, DC, NJ, HI, NY and PR each have paid family leave. If your state isn't in that list, complain to your state government. It's still complicated though. I took paternity leave last year in CA and it was like this: there's a 7-day waiting period, so the first week was straight PTO. Then PFL pays 55% of salary up to I think $1k/we…

One common view is that 4-6 weeks is, in fact, terrible.

Of course it's all trade-offs, but the US is a long ways from most similar countries in this respect, and I can see people getting frustrated with it. In many places there are reasonable options to manage a combined year of parental leave, for example.

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