Workers in California will soon receive a minimum of five days of paid sick leave annually, instead of three, under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday.
The law, which takes effect in January, also increases the amount of sick leave workers can carry over into the following year. Newsom said it demonstrates that prioritizing the health and well-being of workers “is of the utmost importance for California’s future.”
“Too many folks are still having to choose between skipping a day’s pay and taking care of themselves or their family members when they get sick,” Newsom said in a statement announcing his action.
In Denmark theres no set amount of sick days per year.
I was at a job that had sick “periods”, like being sick once could stretch several days, right? Thats still just being sick 1 time.
Five days? Even a lot of smaller, unregulated businesses here in the Phillipines offer way more than that.
Not even enough to cover one covid infection (and you can get infected once a month)
Well, a lot of companies use the official CDC recommendation of isolating for five days after a positive test. I know mine does.
Damn. How many strains are out there?
A good start, but five days is still a laughable amount. That’s literally one illness, one time being sick.
Good thing there’s only one flu season … oh wait.
Meanwhile my colleague managed to get 40 days paid leave + 30 days paid vacation last year. We’re in Germany. Now you say: nice for him. But not really. Someone had to do all the work he couldn’t do in those 40 sick days.
Edit: to make myself clearer. He was sick on mondays or fridays usually/conveniently.
Edit2: seems I must’ve missed that im on /c/antiwork here. Excuse me for careing about my job and getting mad about people making my life difficult.
If working hard because someone takes off work because they are sick maybe you should take off Tuesday Wednesday so you don’t feel over worked or maybe see if the company can hire enough people so that if one person doesn’t show up it doesn’t put an unreasonable amount of work onto you. This is a you and the company problem not this coworker using their sick time problem.
That’s not his problem. The company shouldn’t be running on a skeleton crew. I imagine he didn’t choose to be sick for those 40 days?
It was always on a Friday or Monday coincidentally.
The problem is that you’ve bought in that the company’s problems are yours. They want you to feel like it’s your problem, your responsibility so you take on the extra work for free instead of hiring someone else.
Do you get a bonus based on the company’s profits? For what reason might you have to care that ‘the work gets done’?
I’ve worked in places that try to nurture that “we’re all in this together” mentality but it’s never time for them to pitch in for you. They only foster this to get you to do free labor.
so remember: your fellow’s work habits are none of your business, eh?
Meinst du Elternzeit oder was?
Ne, tageweise krankmelden… Immer wieder Montags und Freitags
Ist legal. Was ist dein Problem? Personenbedingte Kündigung ist bei Missbrauch möglich
Was mein Problem ist? Die Respektlosigkeit dieses Menschen, der sich die 3,5 Tage Woche schnorrt und andere seine Scheiße abarbeiten müssen, weil er unzuverlässig und ständig krank ist.
Kann dir halt echt egal sein.
Eh it really depends on the company. I’m in the US and once took an entire month (only went in each Friday) off just because I had the time saved up, and my boss at the time was wicked cool.
Things like this law are not aimed at people like me and your friend that are able to accumulate that much time off.
30 days Vacation is the general rule at my company. 40 days of being sick on mondays or fridays however is not.
Why not?
Baby steps I suppose. Currently I have 11 guaranteed and further based on company discretion. Not something i lose sleep over.
Pretty sure it’s 15 days in the rest of the world.
What happens if you are sick more than that?
Go to work anyway.
For me, personal time comes next then PTO. Personal time is meant for a variety of things but we get 16 hours a year and can be taken in one hour increments. PTO is basically just vacation time and is taken in half day increments.
you get fired & end up among the millions of homeless Americans, along with hospital bills. such is life in capitalist America
Example:
Frito Lay originally gave us 7 days sick + 7 days as mandated. Something changed (legalese, idk), this dropped to 7 days total for the calendar year which was the CA days + company days (they were being generous). Which, when played out, ended up with people getting strikes against them after the CA mandated days were used up, as it was seen as repetitive behavior. If they really didn’t like you, good fucking luck. They would basically use it as an easy way to get people fired over repeat “offenses”.
This was a while ago, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy, but it was overall, a huge fucking joke.
Unpaid time off if you’re lucky.
Fired if you’re not.
Uhh… how is there not a guillotine in front of every state capitol building?
I burned out and have been sick for half a year. I’ve begun working a bit again (aiming for 9 hours / week).
Full pay throughout.
Do Americans not realize just how badly they’re getting shafted?
I’ve been fortunate enough not to have any major illnesses in my life to date, but the other year I had a bit of a breakdown in the office that turned out to be anxiety disorder manifesting itself, I took two weeks off to get myself straight and start medication, all paid. I can’t imagine trying to deal with anxiety, while also being worried I’m losing pay while doing so.
Too many boomers think it’s a necessary evil, because they used to be able buy a house with minimum wage.
“If I had to do it, so should you…”
I get that they screwed over every subsequent generation, but they’re all 60+ at this point. You can just beat them up. What are they gonna do? Be old at you?
More seriously, enough people are impacted by this that if you organized you could have activists hounding the elected representatives every hour of every day. E.g. drown them in lobby visit requests. Also just show up and knock on doors. Be disruptive. Your state is trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of you. It’s not acceptable.
They vote.
I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or sarcastic
Genuine.
Even though am not an USA citizen I can easily see how this situation can happen anywhere. Unless you have knee jerk reaction, a la France, to any law change and end up with protests on the street with cars burning and fighting with cops all of this can creep up slowly. Slight reductions over long periods of time and people will just ignore it.
Americans can’t even be bothered to vote. You think they’ll build a guillotine? 🤣
The US political system is a Kafkaesque nightmare of despair and loathing. I’m not sure I’d vote either. That’s why I’m advocating direct action. Any politician who votes for people to be miserable and die, should not be allowed a moment of peace.
No, because there is way more to life than just emergency medical leave.
For most people they’re not going to be using that leave, they’d much rather have the money instead of it being taxed from them. Additionally it is much easier to get a job in the US and it generally pays better.
I don’t know what country you live in, but ones that have extensive labor protections often have very high youth unemployment (people with little experience can’t get hired), because businesses are unwilling to take risks on potentially bad employees if they can’t terminate them or have to pay out a lot of money to do so.
It’s popular to demonise America, but there are also a lot of problems the US doesn’t have.
I live in Denmark.
Overall unemployment is at about 2.6%
Youth unemployment is about 7-8%, which is lower than, or about on level with, USA from the numbers I can find.
There’s also way more to life than work.
We’re entitled to 5 weeks paid vacation, 3 of which must be consecutive if requested. Most people have an additional week from union contracts. Parents have a collective 48 weeks paid maternity leave.Don’t have to worry about homelessness. Don’t have to worry about healthcare costs.
You’re getting a raw deal, even if you don’t realize it.
Literally proving my point, Denmark had all these problems and then they privatised it, and created incentives for employment.
“Don’t have to worry about homelessness”
Neither do Americans. The vast majority of Americans will never be homeless, the vast majority of people who complain about it are rich kids on social media trying to get sympathy.
“There’s also way more to life than work”- The biggest factor in quality of life (in a wealthy country) is your job ( or less commonly your parents money). Also if you make more (and pay less in taxes), all those benefits can be provided from your savings. And your savings account is far more flexible than earmarked money from the government.
There is a reason why people want to work and live in America and not … Denmark. The ease to make money and the flexibility to spend it to maximise your quality of life is far greater than most countries.
I don’t think you realize just how close to homelessness a majority of the people in the US are. Most people here live paycheck to paycheck, not able to save any wealth whatsoever.
Nope, not “not able to”. They just want there nice cars and homes. You can easily save money in the US, it’s all just rich kids who want to live the same lifestyle there parents raised them in after they (the parents) worked for 20 years.
I personally know many homeless people and have been homeless myself. We are in the far minority, even most poor communities aren’t in danger of being homeless. Homeless people tend to be drug addicts or violent people that others don’t want to help (for obvious reasons).
There is a reason why people want to work and live in America and not … Denmark.
Fucking Americans, man. 😂
Well you keep making all these claims about how America is a hell scape, when it’s actually a more desirable country than the one you are promoting.
Just to really drive the point home:
About half my salary is covered by the state. The rest is insurance.
That’s about $2800 I’m legally entitled to. If we assume 35% tax that gets me ~$1820 every month for 6 months while being sick that I’m guaranteed. Rent is ~700, so I’d have about $1000 for food and necessities.
I’m not sure you could get a closet to sleep in for $700 in California at this point
It’s social housing in the capital city. 60m2
Tenant democracy. No rent hikes unless it’s necessary or we want to take a loan out for renovations and such.
Sadly in the US many of the companies that control large amounts of housing are all using the same software to calculate how to all raise prices as much as possible every year without having people move out. Around 2010 I moved from a studio with a shared kitchen that was $650 to a one bedroom for $900. Those studios (20m2) now start at $1,000, and the one bedrooms (50m2) start at $2,240.
I’ve been fortunate enough not to have any major illnesses in my life to date, but the other year I had a bit of a breakdown in the office that turned out to be anxiety disorder manifesting itself, I took two weeks off to get myself straight and start medication, all paid. I can’t imagine trying to deal with anxiety, while also being worried I’m losing pay while doing so.
Do Americans not realize just how badly they’re getting shafted?
Most of us really don’t
Plenty of us do and we’re all still doing basically nothing about it despite being aware 🙃
From the headline I thought it’s changing from 3 per month to 5 per month. And I thought, good for you California. Then I read it’s per year. What the fuck is wrong with you all?
I currently get 8 hours per year (working for the State of California).
five fucking sick days is still COMICALLY AND DISGUSTINGLY low. FUCK this out of control capitalism bs
Should be at least onc a month. Good start though
laughs in german 🤣
Laughs in English, but the real English not American English.
Thank you for not guffawing in french.
Hon hon hon
I fart in your general direction!
I spit on your fart!
Your mother was a hamster
Sick leave in the UK is still pretty shit unless your company covers it or you get a generous amount of paid sick days. SSP is a pittance and needs rethinking and employers attitudes towards illness needs sorting out (pay rises being related to illness being one thing).
English is descriptive not prescriptive, nobody owns the English language nor has a more correct version, and that’s coming from Oxford University.
Sounds like you don’t laugh in any language.
That’s actually what Germans sound like when they laugh
Infinite sick days
Not true - you do not get infinite sick days
You get your regular salary for up to 6 weeks, after that there is a steep drop in pay - since you receive „sick pay“ then. After 72 weeks sick pay ends. Then you might be eligible for social security.
Thanks, compared to 5 days, 6 weeks subjectively feels infinite (for an average healthy employee)
It’s important to point out, this is not people deciding not to come to work for 6 weeks and all is good, government picks up the tab. You actually have to be sick, that is to say doctor opens this leave, confirms there’s a need for one, etc.
The Employer pays the first 6 weeks, not the government.
A year in Norway. 26 weeks after the last sick leave, the quota starts again.
That is also not completely correct.
You can get infinite sick days. It just has to be a different illness every 6 weeks. (not repeating the same year)
If you stay in the first 6 weeks threshold you are technically correct - but good luck finding an employer that will keep employing you. You will get sent to an doctor appointed by your employer and if you are „simulating“ you will get fired easily.
“Steep drop” means 80% of your normal pay.
I mean depending on what that’s 80% of it could be the difference between affordability and lack thereof
No - not that easy. it is 70% of your pre tax income with a maximum of 90% your net income. How deep the cut actually is depends on several factors. One factor: There is a maximum amount you can receive - no matter how high your income was. If you earn well and cross that threshold, you will receive way less than the official percentages. To compensate for that you have to get a private insurance.
Cries in American
Thats the ugliest of cries
Cries in a different US state where our company busted us from 40 hours of sick time to 24 to make every plant in the country equal to California’s minimum because it’s the only state with one of our facilities that has a minimum. I’m curious to see if this ends up bringing all our plants up to 40 hours or they hope none of us lowly factory workers pays attention to this sort of thing. I’ll be asking at the next communication meeting.
You know it will be the latter, right?
Yeah, I know where I work.
Hooray! America is saved!
Meanwhile in Germany…
You’re legally entitled to six weeks of continuous sick leave paid by your employer, after which your health insurer will take over the costs. If you’ve had sick leave for the same illness multiple times in the same year, these days will be accumulated. After six weeks of regular paid sick leave, you’ll receive Krankengeld (lit. ‘sick money’) for a maximum of 90 percent of your wage after taxes for up to 72 weeks.
Continuous sick leave is different from sick days. Many states require sick leave, and the US guarantees 12 weeks leave through FMLA, though it’s unpaid, with the government picking up payments after that (iirc). Regardless, a metric ton of companies offer paid long-term sick leave by just carrying insurance policies that pay out your salary if you have a doctor’s note.
I have unlimited vacation time which also applies to sick days, and the company pushes people to use it. I’m looking to have taken around six weeks this year.
I’m aware this is not a common occurrence, but it’s not as though there’s absolutely no laws around this and nobody has paid sick days at all.
Even my shitty little country has universal healthcare and paid sick leave. Employees can call in sick for couple of days, after which they have to open up a sick leave with the doctor. At this point government picks up paying them good chunk of their salary. After two months there’s a mandatory panel of doctors meeting which decides if leave needs to be extended further.
USA seems rather barbaric in that light
Wasn’t there a post on some “ask”-community a couple of days ago with a question like “If you could live in a socialist country, would you?”. And I think the implied socialism is something like this?
Hahahaha Germany a socialist country!
Our great public wellfare system including healthcare, pensions etc. are called Rhine-Capitalism for a reason. In fact our conservatives, the Christian Democrats build it.
What these people call “socialism” was build by the German religious conservatives (admittedly to keep the social democrats and unions from gaining even more power), which might explain why we keep laughing so hard at Fox News Fuckwits calling Germany a socialist country.
"look at these SOCIALISTS they put up some guardrails to prevent people from easily falling into the giant meatgrinder that says CAPITALISM. "
It should be noted even from the most barbaric economist brain measurement like GDP that Germany outperforms the US on that front and its partly because of these policies that prevent peoples minds and bodies from turning into paste like they do in the US.
Yes, true, but i will take this win.
Newsom increased the minimum wage for fast food workers and now this? I will take these little victories
Tiny victories, really…
Yes. I want full blown socialism in America but that isn’t going to happen over night. The unions fought for our 40 hour work week, weekends, and more and those were small victories.
This was a small victory and I will take it. It makes the living conditions od California better and this may get the ball going.
Can employers say you can use your pto for sick time or does it have to be in addition to pto?
Since there’s no minimum PTO requirement, yes but it has to be marked as sick time. Most employers in a state like California though know that they’re going to be the bottom of the barrel if they don’t offer more so they do.
The company I work for just merged PTO and sick time into one. Every 40h you gain an additional hour of PTO, so every two months you get 1 more sick/PTO day.
I think it’s in addition. I say that because I worked for my company in two different states and they have a special PTO category in their time tracking / HR software for CA sick time.
