Sick Time

[KLS52]

And it's another whole story for parents with kids who have to stay home when the kids get sick.
The fact that we can use our sick time to care for immediate family is nice, I suppose.

 

[kazyeeqen]

I don't get sick all that often, but I go in if it would be a struggle to get things done without me. I stay home if my boss is working, cause I figure he can handle it.

They say we shouldn't come in when we are sick, but in practice they don't encourage us to stay home because then they are understaffed.

We get pto, which is sick and vacation time together. It's lame because normally you get more sick time than vacation time, so we get less total time than we did when we had both sick and vacation, but it gets paid out up to a certain amount at the end of your employment, and you can use it all for vacation if you don't get sick much, and we don't lose it like we did with unused sick time. I get one day of pto for every two weeks of work.

 

[mary1]

My personal/sick time is accrued at a rate of about 0.9 hours per two weeks worked, and we're capped at 40 hours.
I pretty much had to choose between resting properly or staying employed.

This is HORRIBLE.

I feel fortunate. I get 5 sick days a year. Anything else is deducted from my statutory holiday (paid) days or vacation time (10 days per year which is the minimum as per Canadian law).

But the culture in my department is to "soldier" on. People are looked down upon for taking sick time! Like they are "babies". I only found that out during this past holiday season when everyone was getting sick. My advice to others was to rest and get better and not spread stuff to the rest of the staff. My bosses were like, "pssh, they are not even THAT sick." and bragging that they came in when they were sick with flu! It's not a contest!!

 

[Kitties]

Dude, you guys live in a rough society! Over here, I can be off sick three (or four?) times (times, not days!) a year, after that I can be off sick more if I have a note from my doctor. And none of this affects my 25 days of annual leave.

You're not kidding! I don't think a lot of Americans realize the benefits many other countries have. Of coarse my favorite is that national health!

I do have sick time, luckily. I will and have worked with bad colds, slight fevers, throbbing tooth. I will not work with the flu though. That is where I draw the line. And even though I do work in a nursing home, they would love for us to come in sick ALL THE TIME instead of calling in.

Once a year we can cash in our sick time at 1/2 our hourly wage as long as we leave 80 hours. I cashed in over 100 hours.

 

[thefadedone]

You're not kidding! I don't think a lot of Americans realize the benefits many other countries have. Of coarse my favorite is that national health!

I know I sure as hell didn't and I am still learning more about it. I don't think I realized how far these health benefits truly extend.

Over the summer a popular restaurant here was shut down for almost a month after several customers got severely sick. It turns out some members of the kitchen staff had prepped and cooked food while they were ill. They contaminated the food and infected their customers. But like many others, I'm sure they only came into work because they needed the money.

I found this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...utm_hp_ref=business&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
More states need to pass laws that require employers to pay their employees for sick time.

 

[Kitties]

I know I sure as hell didn't and I am still learning more about it. I don't think I realized how far these health benefits truly extend.

Over the summer a popular restaurant here was shut down for almost a month after several customers got severely sick. It turns out some members of the kitchen staff had prepped and cooked food while they were ill. They contaminated the food and infected their customers. But like many others, I'm sure they only came into work because they needed the money.

I found this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...utm_hp_ref=business&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
More states need to pass laws that require employers to pay their employees for sick time.

That is terrible and rather scary. It makes me glad that I rarely eat out.

No one wants to work sick. While I have sick time, calling in is very frowned upon. Wrongly so. It can make people come in to sick work, myself included. Last year when we had flu going around work they did a little inservice about hand washing etc but never was it mentioned not to come to work sick. Of coarse not.

Thanks for that article. The part about paid sick and vacation leave was something I didn't know about. It just keeps getting better and better!

 

[das_nut]

If employers/businesses had any sense, they would encourage people to stay off work when they were ill.

Why? If one employer did that, their other workers would still be likely to catch the illness. As long as other businesses kept their contagious workers on the job, it doesn't make sense for one business to be more compassionate.

It's a failure of the invisible hand.

Now, if society had any sense, it may force businesses (and educational institutions) to allow sick employees/students to stay home with full benefits.

 

[Lord Snot]

Why?

... for all the reasons I said in the rest of my post?

 

[Alice-Bee]

Why should people stay off work when sick?
Norovirus thats why, it was just getting passed round at Ms work because people were coming in loaded with cold and the like. M had a cold 3 times because of sick people coming to work.


But then again being self employed I dont get any sick days...if I dont work i dont get paid. That goes for holidays and 'lunch' breaks too.

 

[hungryraccoon]

I can have 2 unpaid sick days a year. I just had a sickness bug yesterday & it was lucky I was off anyway because I've had 2 sick days already since March. We get a disciplinary on the 3rd time we ring in sick which is ridiculous, imo. Last year I had not one day off sick but that wouldn't be taken into account.

Speaking of working around food reminds me of the time at another job of mine in a restaurant, where i'd gone in with a sickness bug to prove to our manager that I was genuinely ill & expected to go straight home. She made me stay anyway & cook people's food. Had to keep running off to be sick! In the end I did walk out & got a disciplinary BUT I wrote a letter of complaint & the manager ended up having to make a formal apology. Ha.

So yeah, there is very likely a sick person making your food when you eat out. How lovely.

 

[das_nut]

... for all the reasons I said in the rest of my post?

As long as employers have a choice to either grant generous sick leave or not, any employer that grants generious sick leave is at a disadvantage for productivity, all other things being equal. Sure, I agree that spreading illness is harmful, but much of that harm does not directly affect the employer, since the only costs the employer has to face is the decreased productivity of ill employees. While society has to bear the cost of the employer's actions spreading the illness to society at large Therefore, the true cost of illness is not born by the employer, nor does the employer gain much of an incentive to encourage sick employees to stay home.

See also: Tragedy of the Commons.

 

[Eleven]

I get unileave. It can be used for any reason and accrues at 20 hours a month.

 

[Muggle]

I don't get sick pay.

I don't really mind though. I just try not to be ill, or I got into work ill. The only time I've had off was when I couldn't walk so there was no point me going into work because most of my job is walking dogs.
But it's £10 a night boarding fee per dog. £4 of that goes straight on the cost of walking the dog (they get two 20 minute walks a day. So 40 minutes. I get paid £6.19 an hour so it's basically £4) . Then it's the cleaning (not just the cleaning materials but also the staff cost of us doing that), the food, the electricity, the laundry etc. If my boss had to give us sick pay and then pay somebody to cover for us they would be making a loss.
So I don't mind. But if I didn't like my job or my boss I probably would mind.

 

[Lord Snot]

As long as employers have a choice to either grant generous sick leave or not, any employer that grants generious sick leave is at a disadvantage for productivity, all other things being equal. Sure, I agree that spreading illness is harmful, but much of that harm does not directly affect the employer, since the only costs the employer has to face is the decreased productivity of ill employees. While society has to bear the cost of the employer's actions spreading the illness to society at large Therefore, the true cost of illness is not born by the employer, nor does the employer gain much of an incentive to encourage sick employees to stay home.

See also: Tragedy of the Commons.

Do you think there's any cost attached to having demoralised employees who can't afford to be sick?

I don't think your point is correct anyway, though I doubt there's any data for it. Sick employees are not much more productive than absent employees, and most businesses know this. Many, but not all, companies in the UK offer some sick leave and I highly doubt the ones who do have lower productivity or lose profits - in fact I would think they have happier and therefore more productive staff.

 

[das_nut]

Do you think there's any cost attached to having demoralised employees who can't afford to be sick?

Sure there's a cost. Next economic upturn, the employees may leave.

But in this economy, it's not much of a risk.

 

[peacefulveglady]

I dispise the work force in the states that you cannot call off sick while being sick, they are brain dead if they make you work if your having a flu, if people would be able to stay home while having flu and something contagious there will be less sick people.