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Comment by ckolkey | Hacker News Reader

> When an employee calls out sick, a Special Inspector may be sent to their home to check if they are really sick and at home. If the employee doesn't answer the door (They're sleeping and don't hear the door? Doesn't matter), they're charged with falsely calling out sick, and face suspension or termination.

I'll never understand why people think it's alright to infantilise other adults like this. If they're sick and go to the doctor, that doesn't count? If they're sleeping (you know, because they're unwell) _that's_ not ok either? I'm not sure why you're advertising this kind of disrespect like its a genuine alternative.

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My intent was not to advertise this as an alternative, and I do not see how you came to that conclusion. I was pointing out that this is not unique to the freight railroads to intimidate employees into coming to work on a regular basis.

I got a similar implication from the line "My agency uses a different tactic, but just as effective."

To help convey your meaning here, it may be better to change it to "My agency uses a different tactic, but just as exploitative and just as effective."

If it helps avoid any further confusion, it shall be done. Thanks for the suggestion.

That's fine, in Italy you get a visit from the "Medico Fiscale". It's confrontational for sure, so you just go to your GP, get a certificate with the prescribed days of rest and attach that to your sick leave notification. Easy

Next door in Austria I've seen employment contracts (from local Mittlestand family owned companies in the automotive sector) where it was specified that "in case of sick leave, the employee agrees to health checks by the company's own GP at the company's expense, even if you already have been written off sick by your own GP." I've never been more disgusted.

Then again, I've also read in the news here of employers hiring private investigators to catch employees fraudulently claiming sick leave, then firing them and suing them claiming back wages paid along with the P.I. fees.

To play the devil's advocate, since sick leaves are costly for businesses here, it probably sucks hard if you have a few employees abusing it heavily to avoid work (even though it's common knowledge that everyone here takes a sick day off work every now and then after a heavy night out partying and drinking or stuff like that).

I really don't want to sound like an (unpleasant word) due to the subject, but I always like to see comments like this. Some in America like to portray the image that we are the cesspool of labor relations, and it reminds me we are not alone and there is a lot of work to be done everywhere to improve life.

> Some in America like to portray the image that we are the cesspool of labor relations, and it reminds me we are not alone and there is a lot of work to be done everywhere to improve life.

But you are! Lots of things can be improved in lots of places, but the problems with US labour don't exist and are mind boggling for developed countries. I'd (and I'm willing to bet all those rail workers would too) a potential egregious invasion of privacy to validate I'm really sick in exchange for pretty much unlimited (details vary by country, sometimes after days/weeks/months you're moved to like 60-70% salary) sick time, instead of no sick time at all.

>Next door in Austria I've seen employment contracts (from local Mittlestand family owned companies in the automotive sector) where it was specified that "in case of sick leave, the employee agrees to health checks by the company's own GP at the company's expense". I've never been more disgusted.

In Dutch employment contracts this doesn't even have to be specified, this is a general condition applying to all employment contracts. Most companies won't actually send a doctor over until you've been sick some time but they always have the right if you want to continue to receive sick pay.

I've known people (white collar) to call in sick because their days will expire, in places that have lax enforcement policies, so I'm not surprised that some workplaces get draconian especially if it causes someone else to get forced to work to provide coverage.

Sick days aren't part of your compensation, they are more like insurance. So of course they expire. I've had colleagues use a sick day for mental wellness. I've had colleagues use sick days while on vacation, ie food poisoning downroute. I've never had colleagues try and combine sick days with vacation days. That is considered a no-no.

This is why some companies go to "unlimited time off" where they get to take vacation time off the books.

Other companies have vacation/sick time as PTO and they don't distinguish between them at all.

Taking the question literally, the answer is that because in this kind of system there's plenty of incentive to lie to get the maximum number of days of paid leave. So if you're in charge of scheduling employees and you assume that they're self-interested then you would assume that left to their own devices a lot of them would probably lie about being sick. I mean, it's a lot safer assumption than assuming that everyone in the rank-and-file takes some great pride in the success of the company and would never do something morally dubious.

But, in fact, the problem is that employees can also abuse policies. And in a large group of employees, there will be some that do abuse policies.

Employees get draconian not just because they're wanna-be tyrants. They sometimes get draconian because they're tired of being gamed by a subset of their employees.

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