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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

All those points are irrelevant though - they're not part of the story here. The author isn't asking for a pay rise to make up the difference in what she earns compared to what she pays out, or for help looking after her child. She's not looking for any special treatment. All of those things are a distraction from the real point of the post: She wants an employer who's compassionate enough not to fire her for being human. That isn't an unreasonable demand.

You don't need to admire someone to believe that they should be able to take some time off to look after a family member who is ill.

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If we made a list of every large company that violated a reasonable code of human morality.. the wheel was spun and today's public outrage is at Yelp. This stuff happens all the time. Sure we get outraged at the random story we come across every now and then, but largely we are numb to it.

I just think the most valuable thing we can do to prevent these situations is have deeper discussions on the macro level instead of micro-analyzing single cases that have all sorts of bias and obfuscation.

I'm British and living in the UK, so under law I can't be fired for taking time off for an emergency with any of my dependents, and I'm entitled to "parental leave" for things like appointments[1]. This is the absolute minimum I would expect a country to afford its citizens.

This is how this problem should be dealt with at the macro level. I find it saddening to see the micro-level impact of not having these sorts of laws in place.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/time-off-for-dependants/your-rights

But how a company handles it's legal obligations is also interesting. When my father died the company that employed me at the time said, essentially, "Go away and come back when you feel ready". This despite the fact that the only other member of my direct team was the other side of the world and there was no one with domain expertise was available so it would have been infuriating for them to cover support. There was certainly no mention of statutory pay or anything.

They also let me leave on multiple occasions at short notice in the preceeding years when he was ill.

Their being incredibly generous with compassionate leave allowed me to deal with the personal stuff without worrying about money/job stuff. It also meant that I worked remotely, covered support, and generally made sure that everything ran as smoothly as possible.

These choices make business sense, as well as being the decent thing to do.

We shouldn't need a law for this. From the facts presented in the article seems like a case where an employer can "do the right thing".

Weird thing is HR let her go after the Talia Jayne issue the other day - HR dept should be plugged in to a lot more stuff than just this single employee's situation.

"do the right thing" for a corp. is to maximize profits, full stop.

Labour laws exist to keep unfettered capitalism in check.

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