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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

It's a problem everywhere. Sick leave is something you take when you have high fever or need surgery, not when you start coughing. Reasons include: there's only so much sick leave you can take, employers expect sick leave to be extremely rare and will "phase you out" if it isn't, getting a sick leave involves a visit to a doctor - which, like any visit to a healthcare facility processing sick people - comes with a risk of catching something even worse than what you came with.

Every place on the planet needs to rethink how we handle infectious diseases. This requires both a cultural and legal shift, so that one can just not come to work when showing mild symptoms and not face any negative consequences. The market will not make this happen on its own. But this is a golden opportunity for the cultural shift - every society on this planet is going to be deeply scarred by SARS-CoV-2.

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> Sick leave is something you take when you have high fever or need surgery

No, you take it when you have a problem big enough that it impacts your ability to work OR when you have a contagious disease.

It's a lose/lose situation for a company if a single person gets half the company sick.

> there's only so much sick leave you can take, employers expect sick leave to be extremely rare and will "phase you out"

In the US sure, in Europe you can't fire someone for health reasons. In France you'll even get 66% of your salary for 3 years if you can't work at all for health related reasons.

In England there are "n day off a year before being disciplined" clauses for many jobs.

Who can afford time off work when you're going to get fired for being ill?

It's wrong, and it does impact the whole company when someone comes in when they shouldn't, but there are several reasons why people get disciplined.

A lot of people would like to stay off work and get paid. Hangovers. Stress because of working conditions.

Just off the top of my head.

England is not a nice place to work for a lot of people.

More detailed response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22602990.

> Europe you can't fire someone for health reasons

On some types of contracts. Probably not the most common ones in practice. Also, making the job a living hell for someone, or laying them off the first legal opportunity arises are common practice, and I think everyone outside our industry knows it (in most industries, employers have more power than employees on the job market).

Well yes of course if you're employed with a contract that doesn't represent your working conditions, which is illegal in the first place, you're fucked. What I meant is that in some countries you can come to work on day x and be asked not to come on day x+1, even with a regular contract, that's going to be very hard to pull in europe, and especially not going to happen if the reason is "took a week of because of the flu".

That's also why there is such a big thing around uber, deliveroo &c. in europe. These types of contracts weren't the norm 20 years ago and are very limiting when shit hits the fan.

In my company we just had the opposite, some dude was very obviously sick, couching for weeks, the CEO couldn't legally force him to take his sick days. So he stayed, and got a few of use sick. So brave and heroic, right ?

> Every place on the planet needs to rethink how we handle infectious diseases. This requires both a cultural and legal shift, so that one can just not come to work when showing mild symptoms and not face any negative consequences

Do I live on another planet? Coming in sick even with mild symptoms is frowned upon at least for a decade where I live. As a tech worker I can easily work remotely, so on mild symptoms I inform my employer that I will work remotely and that's it. If I feel, that I am not capable to work productively - I get a sick leave from my doctor and that's it.

I am of course not from medieval US (though POTUS probably could easily call place where I live a "shithole" country) where sick leave is compensated to 80% of your salary (there's a cap, but it's high enough) and I am not aware of any time limits, if there is - it's a year or more. That's the reason I pay taxes! :)

So no "legal shift" required. There's a "cultural shift" needed for some employers though, where being unwell is a sign of weakness, though legally they cannot do anything to the employee.

All in all, I do not want my restaurant order to be handled by anyone who's is even mildly ill or have a runny nose. Same thing applies to doctors, nurses, grocery store staff, etc. All politicians, employers and people in general who cannot grasp this simple idea - belong to live in the dark middle ages.

As tech workers, we're particularly privileged. Ask your local grocery store clerk, or the person that handles your paperwork in the bank.

I too am from a highly-developed (relative to the US) European country. It's all nice on paper. But in practice, a lot of these legal protections are commonly evaded (and government attempts at fixing it get badmouthed by a population considering itself "not exploited proletariat, but temporarily embarrassed millionaires").

It's still much better than what Americans have, but nowhere near good enough in terms of biosafety.

I agree that everybody who can work remotely is a bit privileged compared to someone who cannot, and in general tech employers are richer and more liberal.

As I said in my reply above, some employers or employees need a cultural shift. Either employers put pressure on employees to not get sick leave (which is illegal and unethical), or as you say some employees think that they are "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" (or just conditioned by decades of peer pressure), but I digress.

My point is that in my whole life I was _never_ rejected a sick leave by a doctor and my doctor definitely does not check if I am grocery store employee or "privileged" tech worker. Also it's not employers business to regulate how often employee can be ill or what "pre-existing conditions" employee has. People are not robots.

I'm not talking about getting a sick note rejected. I'm asking, would you realistically go and get a sick note for a runny noise and feeling generally unwell? Would you feel secure at your job if you did that 20 times a year?

I do not see what the problem is. People with small children get sick leaves many times per year, because children get ill in kindergarten very often. I know women who will get 5-10 one to two day sick leaves per year due to menstruation cramps.

People are not robots, people get ill. I have very good employer which would never question employees job security due to illness. If you do not - search for a better one, join a union and/or inform your colleagues that their rights are protected by law.

The horror stories I hear about evil employers - usually the employers themselves would be the first to take sick leaves or have luxury long lasting holidays that the employees cannot enjoy. Such employees are conditioned to slave away and forget that their rights are protected by law.

> getting a sick leave involves a visit to a doctor - which, like any visit to a healthcare facility processing sick people

Remote doctor visits are starting to become a thing, now! Still don't know how they'll check our temperature, or issue us the sick leave paperwork.

But hey! It's a start!

It's a huge opportunity and I hope it'll become popular everywhere.

Like e.g. someone in my family has been noticing a rash on their hands recently and was getting worried. There's no way in hell I'll let them go visit a doctor now, and this kind of consultation is something perfectly suited for doing it over the Internet.

> It's a problem everywhere. Sick leave is something you take when you have high fever or need surgery, not when you start coughing

Do you be any experience outside the USA? Your description doesn't fit my experience in the UK and Denmark, or my general understanding of the rest of Europe.

Europe will need to consider smaller changes — there are more gig economy workers than ever before, different countries have taken different approaches to closing schools etc — but I think the fundamentals are OK.

I'm in Poland. We have free public healthcare and all the other nice employee privileges Europe boasts about. On paper.

In practice, most of those are guaranteed when your contract is the regular full-time one. Which is minority of jobs in Poland. To avoid paying taxes, most employers strive to employ their workers via contracts meant for part-time or gig work, or through B2B (thus we have lots of sole proprietorships "entrepreneurs" in the country). Most protections don't kick in there.

On top of that, getting a doctor's note for a runny nose is too much of a hassle, and nobody realistically does that.

Thirdly, regardless of how much worker protection your country has, day to day nobody wants to be seen as the panicky outlier at work. That's a self-limiting move, both career-wise and socially. This normalizes coming to work with potentially infectious diseases.

> To avoid paying taxes, most employers strive to employ their workers via contracts meant for part-time or gig work, or through B2B (thus we have lots of sole proprietorships "entrepreneurs" in the country). Most protections don't kick in there.

I know that this "loop hole" exists where I live too, but AFAIK it's either used by very small companies, which can fly "under the radar" or it's not done at all, because inspecting agencies will quickly stop this.

Where I live if you work for employer like a full-time long-term employee - you are full-time long-term employee, and cannot work as a "freelancer"/sole proprietor-contractor (I do not know exact terms in English, but I think we'll understand each other). Work inspection will check this employer rather soon. Usually, because competitor or some employee will make an anonymous report.

If you agree to work on this loop hole - then it's your problem - work as a full time employee, or charge enough to compensate yourself for possible downtime during illness.

Big enterprises definitely do not use this kind of loop hole.

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