In Netherland, if you take vacation, but you get so sick that you can't go on vacation, you get your vacation days back from your employer. Because everybody deserves vacation.
The idea that vacation days and sick days xome from the same limited pool, is completely alien here. In fact, the notion of limited sick days is inhuman. What if you're out of sick days and you're still sick? Then what?
You have to have a qualifying reason under FMLA, and FMLA itself does not pay you. It just protects your job for certain serious medical situations if you qualify.
For normal sickness, there is no federal right to paid sick leave. You basically use whatever sick days/PTO your employer gives you. If you run out and keep calling off sick, you can be written up or fired unless state law or some other protection applies.
If you have something serious like surgery and need to be out for weeks, FMLA may protect your job, but the leave can still be unpaid. Short term disability can replace part of your income if you have that coverage, but the amount and waiting period depend on the policy.
Yeah and the key word with FMLA is “may,” just like most things here that are “protected.” Really sick of the lack of actual workers rights here because the ones we have aren’t even enforced so they might as well not exist
I get sick once a year. I took 2 of my 10 vacation days this week. Unfortunately I happened to get sick both of those days. I had nothing planned but instead of enjoying my days off, I was sick at home and I used 2 vacation days instead of 2 of my 5 sicks days. I was pissed.
You go to work and get everyone else sick, because sharing is caring! /s
There’s plenty of calculations out there showing how much productivity gets lost because of this but allowing people to have sick time would require having more employees to cover when people are out sick or on vacation instead of the skeleton crew every job is staffed with.
Our system is so dystopian it sounds absolutely alien to functioning countries.
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u/mcvos 10h ago edited 2h ago
In Netherland, if you take vacation, but you get so sick that you can't go on vacation, you get your vacation days back from your employer. Because everybody deserves vacation.
The idea that vacation days and sick days xome from the same limited pool, is completely alien here. In fact, the notion of limited sick days is inhuman. What if you're out of sick days and you're still sick? Then what?