> I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit?
If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an employee would prefer to have more days off. However, all else would not be equal. The PTO days are a cost to the employer, which means the employer can afford to shell out less in other forms of compensation. Think of the job market as a market where employers compete for employees (and vice versa, but that's tangential to the point here). Employers offer different forms of compensation to employees: salary, bonuses, paid vacation days, etc. If the government suddenly mandated that employers must give all employees more vacation days, then the employers could afford to pay out less in other forms of compensation. Sure, in the short run the employer would pay out more to employees and be less profitable, but over time they would balance out this cost by paying less in other benefits.
In other words, if you take the perspective of an employee with a 5+ year time horizon, the total amount of compensation received from the employer would not be expected to increase as a result of those government-mandated extra vacation days. What would change, however, is the incentive of people to go to work sick and infect others. If sick days cost you money, then you are incentivized to go to work sick. As a result, more people get sick. That would be bad. So from a risk/reward pespective, we have a reward of ~0, and a risk of more sickness.