This is reminding me of my first intern job, when I'd gotten an email about "donating vacation days" to someone with an extended illness who'd used up theirs. I didn't have any vacation days anyway because I was hourly, but I was kind of confused why taking sick time when you're sick required having coworkers "donate" it, so I asked a coworker why donating vacation days was even a thing. Coworker seemed a little dismayed, thought I was saying that it didn't make sense for people to help out a sick coworker. I had just assumed that the company wouldn't give people a hard time about having cancer.
How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
131–140 of 332 posts
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#132I 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
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important to note that these are government leave programs. A big problem in the USA is that it is expected that your employer handle this stuff. Here in Canada, the employment insurance system - a payroll-tax-funded program that handles short-term unemployment benefits - also handles parental leave. They offer 4 months for birth mothers and a an additional 8 months for any parent. The money is tiny - something like…
> "Punishing them for hiring women who want a family" is a curious way to put it. The reason that private companies should be expected to perhaps shoulder SOME of this "burden" (I disagree with your choice of wording there) is that we all live together in a goddamn society and there should be a part of everyone's effort (private individuals, businesses and the government) that goes towards the overall betterment of t…
No because it concentrates the burden onto the employer and creates very real economic incentives to avoid hiring women from certain age ranges depending on the industry.
It's like telling corporations they can't buy insurance for a semi-common event since they should 'shoulder SOME of this "burden"' and just self insure. The entire point of their taxes/insurance should be distributing the cost of something like this. They shoulder the burden through their taxes, and it keeps it fair.
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#134I 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
> 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.)
> This is the trade off we pay for lower taxes.
Why would mandating that companies provide meaningful maternity or paternity leave require higher taxes? This topic doesn't have much to do with fiscal policy.
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really think that a minimum number of sick days should be mandatory as a public health measure. The amount of lost productivity caused by sick people infecting their coworkers per year has to be immense.
My experience in the real world is that people don't want to burn their valuable PTO, and continue to come to work when they have a minor illness. (I correct my employees if they do this) But this being the case, having the possibility of extra protection for protracted illnesses isn't going to do a whit for protecting us from coworkers passing around a cold or minor flu.
Make it something separate from regular PTO that doesn't carry over and can't be accrued.
Maybe something like 16 hours per quarter, that expire at the end of the quarter.
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#136Aside from police brutality, all the spying and erosion of privacy, corruption at high level (like regulatory capture), the medical and insurance situation points more to the fact that this country -- US, is not a civilized country. It is a country with a high GDP, strong military, good natural resources, strong manufacturing. All those nice things. But it is still not a civilized country.
As a counterpoint from civilized Germany, after the birth of a child both parents are granted 14 months paid leave (at 2/3 salary up to ~$3k/mo) to split between them. Usually the mother takes 12 and the father 2 concurrently. The state pays for this, not the employer. You also have the right to 3 years unpaid leave (extended with further children) and the employer must find you a similar position when you return to…
The real "benefit" of the American system is that it keeps everyone eager. It keeps us grateful to have a crappy job at all. It keeps us ready to trade salary for benefits, or vice versa. It keeps us at jobs we don't like for the medical benefits we think they give us and our families. It reduces the bargaining power of labor.
Is this good in the long term? Maybe not, but it is the American aesthetic. It goes hand in hand with the perpetual hope that we will win the lottery/start the next Facebook/work our way up the ladder and then we too can benefit from low taxes. That's why poor Americans defend the privileges of rich Americans to the death: if we ever make it up there we want those privileges to remain!
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important to note that these are government leave programs. A big problem in the USA is that it is expected that your employer handle this stuff. Here in Canada, the employment insurance system - a payroll-tax-funded program that handles short-term unemployment benefits - also handles parental leave. They offer 4 months for birth mothers and a an additional 8 months for any parent. The money is tiny - something like…
> "Punishing them for hiring women who want a family" is a curious way to put it. The reason that private companies should be expected to perhaps shoulder SOME of this "burden" (I disagree with your choice of wording there) is that we all live together in a goddamn society and there should be a part of everyone's effort (private individuals, businesses and the government) that goes towards the overall betterment of t…
Right, but if private companies had to pay for parental leave directly rather than through taxes, they would have a huge incentive to avoid hiring people who wanted to start families.
Taxes are the right way to pay for this, just like most things that are for the overall betterment of society.
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#138The older I get, the more disappointed I tend to become with my country.
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#139I 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
Another thing that makes it even worse is having health insurance that is tied to your employment. So if you get cancer and can't manage to keep your time off to less than 12 weeks plus your accrued sick days then you can be fired and lose not only your income, but your health insurance as well. It is an unbelievably awful system.
Doesn't the ACA largely fix that? Isn't losing your job a qualifying life event that allows you to sign up outside of the normal open enrollment period?
Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
#140Genuinely curious - where are the markets-should-be-completely-unregulated guys on this?
Well, the FMLA IS government regulation, and it isn't working so well.
Besides, plenty of other governments regulate this, and they do things differently. Government regulation vs no regulation doesn't really weigh in here.