Christie: Sick leave is only for when you are sick...

[cthulu2016]

...and if you are not sick then not being sick is your reward."

From Chris Christie, just now.

Hooray! Not being sick is your reward.

So it seems that God is now on one side in collective bargaining with public employees, since that benefit (not getting sick) is now part of your compensation package!

I understand that this is framing sick-leave as an insurance program, similar to workman's disability compensation... and some might agree with that. I do not, myself. The insurance framing makes worker compensation dependent on external, unknown factors.

A manager can increase profits by leaning on people to not take sick leave. A company gets cost a bunch of money when a fly epidemic hits town, and banks money if it doesn't.

And maybe they are taking sick time because a child is sick... do people with kids get more sick time? Is that fair to employees without kids? Is not having kids their "reward"?

But either way, my central point here is the framing, not the policy.

No matter how one parses the issue, for an employer to say that good health should be considered part of your employee benefits is F'ing creepy framing.

It is not the employer's to dispense.

If Christie was not being creepy (viewing the employer and God in concert as feudal lords responsible for their peasants) he would have said:

"The reward for people who do not get sick is that they will have sick leave available if they do get sick." That frames sick leave as a form of insurance for a pool of employees that is offered in exchange for overall labor.

But not getting sick is not a freaking employee benefit!

[leftyohiolib]

1. what else is it for?

[lame54]

2. Sick child that one has to care for

[leftyohiolib]

4. oh ok, is that covered under fmla?

[leftyohiolib]

6. but you could still call in sick even if it was your child u just call off, right?

[lame54]

9. every job i've had...

allowed parents to call in sick if it was their child that was sick - I don't know what the law reads

[4Q2u2]

3. So at least he did not try to define what is sick.

Not yet at least. So you could be SICK of blow hard barf bag lying pols and need a day off, or just sick of work and need time.
F him. Maybe he should put out a PSA on that.

[B2G]

5. My company did away with sick time

for the very reason that many were using it whether they were sick or not. We also had family care time, which was being abused as well.

Now it's just all lumped into a personal time off bucket...for whatever reason.

[cthulu2016]

7. I agree with that. The insurance model is usually unfair in practice.

Some malingerers use all their sick time for pimples and headaches while other folks hobble around work on a recently broken leg, and "use it or lose it" is almost a demand for folks to use sick leave as general leave.

And it is not obvious that the employer should take compensation from healthy employee A to pay sick time for sick employee B. Which is what is being done. (In a negotiated contract with no paid sick leave the hourly wage would be higher for everyone, or more vacation time for everyone.)

[B2G]

10. We've also greatly expanded the work at home model

So just about everyone has access to the network remotely. Most folks work at home at least a couple of days a week...me, I'm full time out of my house now.

Really made the need to take sick time moot, unless you're flat on your back sick. Then you take PTO.

[Douglas Carpenter]

8. when I worked at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston - back in 1989 -you could by policy use half

of your sick leave for personal days - provided you worked it out with your department that you would claim your personal days when it was not too busy. That was a very enlightened policy