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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

#141

Post by protonfish »

maxerickson wrote: post #129
sarah2079 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Disability insurance is meant to kick in there. (I'm not arguing that this actually works for everyone, just that there is a mechanism for dealing with inability to work)

Wrong. Disability will make up for some lost wages, but does not replace medical insurance.

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

#142

Post by eli »

learc83 wrote: post #135
CWuestefeld wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't love the idea of policing "legitimate" illness vs "mental health day" vs vacation.

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

#143

Post by Domenic_S »

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/week, so you make up the difference with partial PTO. That can go on for up to 6 weeks; if memory serves I took 4 weeks total off.

All in all not terrible. I realize I'm fortunate to live in CA where there is a PFL policy, and to work for a company that's with-it enough to process these claims quickly and competently. I truly feel for others like the woman in the article.

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

#144

Post by josho »

sbarre wrote: post #82
Pxtl wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

Congrats you just argued for a social welfare system. This is what modern societies do. Yet, for some reason in the US it's branded as socialism which is viewed as equal to communism which is evil and therefore never enters the debate.

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

#145

Post by jackmaney »

chaostheory wrote: post #117
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

> 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.

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

#146

Post by eli »

jacalata wrote: post #96
humanrebar wrote: post #28

This makes my blood boil, too. I'd also like to point out that skimpy paternity leave policy is also bad for mothers. Some mothers are fortunate to have friends and family willing to pause their lives to help with the transition and recovery, but some really need the father around to take over running the household, especially if there were complications during the birth.

Lack of paternity leave ties directly into social assumptions that the mother is the carer, the "mommy track" at work, and through to the assumption of custody for the mother. I don't understand why it isn't a bigger issue. You should even be able to get feminists and MRA guys to work together on this one!

Myself and all the feminists I know are definitely in favor of paternity leave. I'm having a hard time imagining an argument against it.

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

#147

Post by jordanpg »

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…

Amusing to see this on the same day that Tim Cook shocks no one by coming out publicly but making headline news everywhere.

For all of the tremendous focus on so-called family values in the United States, it seems that what is usually meant has something to do with sex. If only all of that energy could be focused on serious policy problems like this one.

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

#148

Post by maxerickson »

protonfish wrote: post #141
maxerickson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disability insurance is meant to kick in there. (I'm not arguing that this actually works for everyone, just that there is a mechanism for dealing with inability to work)

Wrong. Disability will make up for some lost wages, but does not replace medical insurance.

Or "wrong" because I just didn't use enough words. COBRA was passed in 1986, so given reasonable DI, medical coverage could be maintained.

ACA makes it that much more likely that coverage could be maintained.

I don't see how it is unreasonable to expect DI to cover a planned expense like medical insurance, but I agree that I didn't spell all that out in painful detail.

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

#149

Post by ssharp »

bza wrote: post #134
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.)

> 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.

If a company is required to provide paid leave, then that means they are required to pay a person money and aren't getting anything in return for that money. In other words, you're paying a person not to work. It essentially acts the same way as a tax.

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

#150

Post by pbhjpbhj »

learc83 wrote: post #54
ceejayoz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

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.

For large companies the minimum number of sick days should be the number of days for which a doctor verifies you are unfit to work through illness. Such companies who also have morals will make allowances for a certain number of uncertified days of illness (you don't get a doctor's note for flu, going in to work when you're too weak to stand up and can barely concentrate long enough to take meds; or going to work and spending the whole day on the toilet, again, same). They should also, as a minimum show of humanity, allow leave for funerals of family and close friends.

The USA looks less and less like a democracy _for_ the people the more I learn about it.

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