> 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.
If you're in Massachusetts, please vote Yes on Question Four next week.
Question Four mandates that employees who work for employers having eleven or more employees would earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per calendar year, while employees working for smaller employers would earn and use up to 40 hours of unpaid sick time per calendar year.
Without it, there are people making your food who are working while sick.
Having worked in restaurants, I wonder whether this would actually make more than a marginal impact on the number of food workers coming in sick. If I'm a cook and I am told I get 40 hours per year (so 3-6 shifts, depending on your hours) to get paid to stay home 'sick', there's a pretty good chance I'm going to come in anyway with a cold, so that I can take off for more important reasons, like family occasions or a court date. Since I don't get paid vacation days for these things, I'm going to call my boss, cough a few times, and use a paid sick day.
Note: I'm not against the idea, just think it's too little to meet it's stated purpose.
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.
Like Bill Hicks used to say, "You think you're free? OK. Try doing anything without money, then you'll see how free you are."
Also, the vast majority of americans don't actually enjoy any individuality; what they actually love is running their mouths right up to the second they need major medical treatment. Then the whining starts.
A couple years ago I read an amazing interview that I wish I'd kept. During the great recession there was some parent out of work receiving TANF (food stamps) from the government so that he and his wife and kids could eat. And just so it's clear, I can't think of a better use of my tax dollars than making sure all people, particularly kids, have enough to eat. Yet he was busy complaining about how they (and no prize for guessing who they is; some lazy black eating t-bone steaks) was abusing food stamps while he was getting what he deserved. All the while he was eating my tax dollars. It was one of the few times I'd ever sympathized with Republican's needs to embarrass those getting help from the government. I wanted a flashing red sign to go off when this guy bought groceries with food stamps so maybe he'd stop shitting on other people doing the same. Though perhaps some people in life just need someone below them so they can tell themselves that no matter what, they're better than X.
USA was never a democracy. It is a Constitutional Representative Republic. Further democracies are the very very worst form of governance. Mob Rule is not something you should desire to live under.
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.
A couple years ago a certain im-too-fucking-important-to-take-sick-time asshole biz-dev exec came to work sick as a dog and had literally 2/3 of employees out sick the next week. And thats at a tech company where we had plenty of sick time.
Now think about people who work in restaurants, fast food, or on an ambulance as emts. Most of them have zero paid sick leave. Hell, when we were discussing Jimmy Johns -- a shitty sub shop -- requiring NDAs, it came out that in order for an employee there to take (unpaid!) sick time, he or she must find a replacement first.
Think about that the next time you buy a sandwich: the person making it will come to work, sick or not. Yummy!
But thanks to the accounting foresight of the employers, those costs are mostly borne by the employees. So the employers have all the leverage, and zero incentive to use it for anyone else's benefit.
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.