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Comment by shawabawa3 | Hacker News Reader

I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre.

What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed?

For comparison, this is how sick leave works in the uk: https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave

And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

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> 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.

I really think that a minimum number of sick days should be mandatory as a public health measure.

The amount of lost productivity caused by sick people infecting their coworkers per year has to be immense.

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.

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.

Make it something separate from regular PTO that doesn't carry over and can't be accrued.

Maybe something like 16 hours per quarter, that expire at the end of the quarter.

I don't love the idea of policing "legitimate" illness vs "mental health day" vs vacation.

> 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.

Forcing this tradeoff is the entire reason that firms have single-pot PTO; this isn't an issue when sick leave is separate from vacation.

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.

> The USA looks less and less like a democracy _for_ the people the more I learn about it.

It's what people get when they come up with their own fancy interpretation of the meaning of the word "freedom".

Enjoy a lot of individualism? Well, better be prepared to live with the consequences.

N.B.: I grew up under communist dictatorship, so I know the other extreme too. Both are pernicious.

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.

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U

"I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No."

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.

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!

> I really think that a minimum number of sick days should be mandatory as a public health measure.

In some states it is, though the minimum number, when there is one, tends to be very low.

It is.

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.

Another thing that makes it even worse is having health insurance that is tied to your employment. So if you get cancer and can't manage to keep your time off to less than 12 weeks plus your accrued sick days then you can be fired and lose not only your income, but your health insurance as well. It is an unbelievably awful system.

Indeed. Remember this when you go to vote next month.

Disability insurance is meant to kick in there.

(I'm not arguing that this actually works for everyone, just that there is a mechanism for dealing with inability to work)

Wrong. Disability will make up for some lost wages, but does not replace medical insurance.

Or "wrong" because I just didn't use enough words. COBRA was passed in 1986, so given reasonable DI, medical coverage could be maintained.

ACA makes it that much more likely that coverage could be maintained.

I don't see how it is unreasonable to expect DI to cover a planned expense like medical insurance, but I agree that I didn't spell all that out in painful detail.

Doesn't the ACA largely fix that? Isn't losing your job a qualifying life event that allows you to sign up outside of the normal open enrollment period?

Sorta but the people that find themselves in that situation will [usually] run out of money before the Cancer either:

A) Kills them B) Is Cured

Losing an income is kinda a big issue when you still have to pay cash for the medical insurance. ACA just fixed one issue. It didn't fix the underlying problem of:

Major Health Event == Bankruptcy Due To Loss of Income

It fixed it for many middle class folks [e.g. programmers] that can save enough to survive that kind of event. I doubt someone making $10-12/hr can save enough.

> Losing an income is kinda a big issue when you still have to pay cash for the medical insurance. ACA just fixed one issue.

ACA also expanded Medicaid eligibility [1] and includes income-based subsidies for insurance, so it addresses (to a certain extent) the having to pay cash for the insurance.

[1] Though several states successfully sued to create an opt-out for the expansion and have opted out, so in those states, the expansion doesn't exist.

Yes. But switching providers isn't that simple and doesn't cover everyone.

Idk about you but I'm paying about $0/year now and I know that coverage would cost me $XXX/month via cobra or the like. I'd have to start over with Medicaid (due to different providers taking it) combined with the fact its a minority expense less than my food or rent.

No, not by a long shot.

Insurance is still tied to employment, and even if you can sign up under the exchange after losing a job, the insurance offered under the exchange is less than desirable.

ACA was never designed to solve any problems with health insurance, in fact it was designed to exacerbate them to pave the way for Single Payer Health Care which based on the comments in this thread will be hailed as wonderful by most of the commenters here because people seem to worship government like it was their Saviour

> What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed?

You stop getting paid by your regular employer. Depending on the exact nature and effect of your illness and work situation, you may be eligible for a limited duration of legally-guaranteed job-protected unpaid leave (either federal FMLA or state-level protected leaves which may be more generous), during some of which you may receive disability compensation payments which are less than your regular salary.

When you exhaust the guaranteed job-protected leave, you can be fired.

I worked at a smaller company who had two weeks paid vacation and unlimited sick days. The sick days rule was an unwritten rule, but man, did it get abused.

We had a woman who was up for a promotion and didn't get it. She went in and asked the manager why she didn't get her promotion and the manager told her, "Well, with close to 50 sick days, I'm not sure you're completely committed to to your current job."

So yeah, after so many years of getting abused, they just started a program where you get three weeks off, period. You can decide how you use it. Be it vacation or sick days, doesn't matter.

I worked for a government contractor where one accrued something like half a day of sick leave every two weeks. A lot of people thought that they were robbing themselves if they didn't burn every sick day fairly promptly. Evidently more than a few people in management did the same.

<<I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre.

I believe it's mostly for accounting purposes. Most employers allow you to borrow from what hasn't accrued. It doesn't typically become an issue until you leave the company and have used more than has been accrued. At that time, they will probably not pay you for X days you are over your accrual.

When you say "Most" I assume you have worked 100% at places I haven't. HR and managers state in my cases, "If you don't have sick time you will not be paid and you may lose your position." Sick time starts after two or three months.

You should try to find more reasonable employers. Believe it not they do exist in the U.S.

It amazes me that people think this should be at the employers' discretion.

It isn't that I think it should be at the employer's discretion, it's that there are better companies to work for out there and we should all endeavor to work for them if our current employer is actively screwing us over.

Sometimes, that's simply not possible.

Those of us that don't have the option of a better employer need laws that mandate some reasonable minimum of benefits, because we won't get them any other way.

Do not confuse "it is" with "it should be."

When you work at an "At Will" state (PA) this is what you get stuck with. I never understand the Union Hate when it is clear that companies are look as anti-competitive if they don't tow the line with screwing with employees. I work for the nicest and best company I have ever worked for and it is still this way

IIRC many employers will stop paying you, then it starts to be a "short term" disability. And then you go through that process, which often includes X days unpaid as a sort of "deductible"

As you probably have read, the historical reason for a limit on 'sick days' was abuse by people who were unhappy with their employer for one reason or another, that resulted in some employers simply firing people who go sick, and that lead to labor organizing itself in the form of unions and well you got sick leave as a thing [1].

I think it is generally a crutch used instead of good management (like mass surveillance is a crutch against better police work, and nuclear weapons are crutch against better diplomacy) but so far we know the 'no sick leave' state (pre-union organizing etc) and the 'fixed sick leave' state (what we have today). The new thing, 'don't work when you are sick or recovering' regardless of limits, is a bit too unbounded for most folks. And because of that lack of forecastability it makes forecasting productivity or work production very difficult. Anything that makes it harder on management has a fairly tough road ahead of it.

[1] http://www.unionplus.org/about/labor-unions/36-reasons-thank...

The usual solution to abuse of sick pay, mentioned in the UK link above, is to require a doctor's certification for any leave > X days (7 in the UK according to the link, I know it's 3 in Switzerland).

Also a EU court decided that you get sick days even if you are on holiday: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18534028

Maybe I'm too engrained in the American way of thinking, but why in the world if you are sick on Christmas (when you're already being paid while off) should you get paid again in the terms of additional sick days? It doesn't make any sense to me.

If you can turn that paid holiday into a vacation day and take a sick day instead, that's awesome. It basically works like this:

"We planned for you to have some time to recharge by giving you holidays and vacation days. You got sick? Can't recharge while you're sick, so that's a sick day. Take a REAL vacation day later when you're well."

... because vacation is for recharging your batteries, which you don't do if you're ill?

I can make a similar argument in the other direction. Vacation days are roughly equivalent to money, and many companies let you convert them. If you get sick on a normal day it doesn't cost you any money/vacation. Why should it cost you money/vacation to get sick on an attempted vacation day?

If anything you're already doing the company a favor to use sick days on vacation rather than any other time because everyone has already planned for you to not be there.

At my startup I've decided to have a "take what you want when you want it" vacation and sick day policy. I care about results against goals, not how many hours you work or when they are. Abusing the policy in a way that affects morale (e.g., deciding only to never show up in the office and spend a year working from your batcave) would be grounds for a warning/replacement. So far it has worked well, but with only a handful on the team. Not sure how it will scale to a team of 100 or 1,000 or more.

Do you have a written policy? Care to share it?

What happens if an employee falls on stairs and spends the next two months in hospital and then another one in bed, at home? (happened to a colleague of mine)

Do you set an example for your employees so they actually take those vacation/sick days?

I tend to avoid companies with "unlimited vacation" because their employees seem to take even less vacation than they would have otherwise, don't get compensated for it as a result when they leave, and feel pressured to not take it in the first place. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613526 and many other stories.) It's even worse when the bosses present a terrible work-life balance to employees.

I basically think back to one of the times I've been really sick but not contagious, or my honeymoon, to figure out if I like a vacation policy or not. Minus 1-2x/year for crunch times, assuming I'm keeping up with my workload, would I have taken a day off? Would I have felt like I couldn't take the time off? Would people have been receptive to me working from home? Now double that time off if I want to have kids in the future, am I still okay with it? Sad to say many unlimited policies don't make me feel comfortable on any front here.

Generally, if you work for a large employer, you have some form of disability insurance that picks up after a month or three. If you're out that long, the theory is that you're probably going to stay out, and your employer should be able to replace you and pass the costs onto an insurer, rather than pay salary for a non-working worker.

Sick leave here is unpaid (well not exactly, but something like a 3-day leave due to sickness can be unpaid). Which means that when I'm sick, I still go to work as usual and get everyone else sick. Because fuck them.

> And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

This is the trade off we pay for lower taxes. (Yes certain states like NY and CA have higher tax rates, but they make up for it with more state benefits.)

> This is the trade off we pay for lower taxes.

Why would mandating that companies provide meaningful maternity or paternity leave require higher taxes? This topic doesn't have much to do with fiscal policy.

If a company is required to provide paid leave, then that means they are required to pay a person money and aren't getting anything in return for that money. In other words, you're paying a person not to work. It essentially acts the same way as a tax.

This already happens all the time for salaried employees, they often receive vacation time that doesn't reduce their yearly salary and this works perfectly fine for those roles. This isn't a tax scenario, this is more of a compensation adjustment for workers.

Vacation is still an option for employers, not a requirement. If the government required vacation time and a company did not previously offer vacation time, it's net-effect would still be an additional tax.

I'm not making a moral argument here -- actually find it rather immoral for a company not to offer adequate time off. I'm just saying the net-effect of a government forcing a company to pay more money than it normally would is a tax.

Then that's a horrible, shitty fucking trade.

Well spoken, thank you.

Maternity and paid sick leave policies have very little to do with tax rates.

See the CA state budget here: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/agencies.html

The big-ticket items are the things affecting tax rates, like 11B on corrections, or almost 50B on K-12 education, and another 50B on health care services.

I believe what the OP was saying here was that in countries like the UK or Canada with subsidized/government-provided health care, the costs for that health care is covered by higher taxes/VAT.

CA's PFL program is part of EDD, which spends $14 Billion: http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/StateAgencyBudgets...

Not all of it comes from California.

As Domenic pointed out, maternity leave is related to EDD since you can claim disability for it.

http://www.edd.ca.gov/disability/FAQ_DI_Pregnancy.htm

CA sick leave through FMLA, when there's a claim on disability, also draws from EDD. Your employer only starts kicking in your sick leave pay AFTER the state's coverage of your salary maxes out.

EDD spends $14 billion per year. It has a lot to do with high CA tax rates. There's even more related taxes involved if you happen to live in SF itself.

When you actually count the full tax load on American employees (federal, state, and local income taxes; property taxes; sales taxes; medical insurance; disability insurance; and retirement savings), we really aren't a low-tax country. In fact, we do not actually compare favorably to most of Europe when you consider the all-in price of life.

What we really pay for is $1T+/year on our military for bombing brown people and maintaining oil supplies.

It depends on the state. States with less benefits have a lot less taxes and vice versa.

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