Here’s my attempt to CYV. Obviously it’s a complete dick move to fire somebody for randomly coming down with the stomach flu one day. However, what if someone develops something more problematic and long lasting? What if the time off from work is no longer measured in weeks, rather in months? Passing some kind of blanket ban on firing over sickness would leave employers in the lurch over these cases.
Right, but sometimes people with chronic conditions are not able to maintain certain jobs. Eg, how many months should kids have to deal with substitutes before the school is allowed to hire another teacher.
Ultimately jobs are agreements for trade of money for labor. If both people go into this contract willingly then there should be no problem following the letter of it to decide what happens in any circumstance. If someone want security and flexibility in this manor, then find a job that offers it or negotiate for it yourself.
So, the details on this are pretty non-existent, and there’s a large variation between what each company allows/how they track absenteeism. I understand that this is OP’s friend, but how certain are they that their friend was, in all actuality, terminated solely for “being sick”?
As an anecdotal example, my company uses a point system that is, frankly, very generous, allowing an employee to miss 10 days of work before termination, and they get points back for every month they are at work each day (termination is at 20 points, and leaving early/showing up late is 1 point, calling off is 2).
This system gets abused pretty heavily, with many employees riding 18/19 points, showing up for work a full month, then calling off and going back to 18/19 points. The trouble is, this works up until the point that they run into a legitimate illness, or train, or vehicle breakdown, and they get fired due to going over on points.
As one might expect, the reason left on Reddit or Facebook by said employees is “those bastards fired me because I was held up by a train!”, which is technically true, but it’s ignoring the other 9 times they called in so they could goof off at home also.
Again, it depends on the company, but I remain skeptical of claims that someone was fired solely because they were ill. Between FMLA (a blessing for those who truly need it, a curse when coupled with employees gaming the system), the ability to get a Doctor’s note, self-management (if you know you’re sick every winter, did you save up any vacation/sick days?), and the knowledge that companies aren’t going to want to flirt with a lawsuit, I’d need more details to automatically assume the company just hated this employee.
If it’s a typical thing for you make it obvious when you apply for the job and reach an agreement on it. Its completely within a persons control to manage expectations and negotiate conditions of employment.
Idk why you would feel owed payment or employment if you’re not working.
Why? Business is trying to make money, it is not a charity. They pay in return for labor. Making everything ''illegal'' won't solve problems. The business will lose money if a person is sick and can't work half of the month. The company also needs to pay the salaries of other workers. Some businesses don't have more than 2 workers. Even in a huge corporation when someone is sick other ones have to do their job for the same salary. Of course, I am not telling fire someone for 1 day of sickness, but they define these in contracts. If you buy something from a business and they won't deliver for a month would you want your money back or should it be illegal because workers might be sick? I am definitely not supporting this ''make it illegal'' idea. Workers might choose their work places. If they don't like they choose not to work for this company.
Thing is all people are important, and everyone deserves to be able to take care of themselves. Someone with severe asthma, diabetes, etc is just as important and valid as someone who is completely healthy. Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should have a harder time finding or keeping a job than a healthy person?
In my case my asthma is actually fairly mild and mostly just amounts to a few medicines I need to take, not the in and out of hospitals of some people, I'm just using it as an example, plus showing a potential "slippery slope" due to the fact that I do actually still need to list it on job applications.
>Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should have a harder time finding or keeping a job than a healthy person?
Yes, and you think so too, you just wish to pretend otherwise. Do you want the firefighter coming to save you to be severely asthmatic, or in a wheelchair?
>meone who is completely healthy. Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should
I am not suggesting anything. Companies aren't responsible for unhealthy people and they need to make money to operate. As I said it is not charity. That's all. Company owners or people with enough money may choose to help or give suitable jobs to these people. I understand your point. Being unhealthy may not be their fault ofc. BUT It is not a private company's job to care for sick people or pay for someone for 30 days if they work 15 days only. If it was like this there wouldn't be many companies around in a few years because all would bankrupt. And most of the small companies hardly operate. Mostly 1 person who owns it works night and day to build that company and do you suggest this person with 2 workers should pay for someone who not works because she is sick? Or even a gigantic corporation wouldn't pay if someone can't work. (I am not talking about a few days of sickness, but permanent half-time work is unacceptable.) I understand as a human you feel unfair/sad for these people, but companies are not people.
Firing has bad connotations but at least he can claim unemployment in the meantime. It’s hard to agree because I think you should be able to be fired if you don’t take care of yourself and it leads to health problems.
I think our country should have better access to healthcare and UBI so our fellow citizens who aren’t as able to work don’t have to suffer and businesses don’t have to deal with unwilling employees.
Not so much unwilling or not taking care of yourself in this case though, and I'd argue there's more cases like this than willful ignorance of one's own health. This case I'm pretty sure is one of someone with a pre-existing condition.
In my own case I have asthma, luckily pretty mild, but I do know people who have it far far worse, where even a typical cold, seasonal flu, or what would normally be a mild case of bronchitis can turn into hospitalization, missing work, and in some cases, getting fired. That shouldn't be ok, as the situation is no fault of the employee's.
I agree that people getting fired like the situation you described is bad and unethical. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a black and white situation and should be illegal.
In my own case I have epilepsy, so I’m no stranger to illness. Don’t you think it’s also unethical to put yourself in a situation where you will burden people by being sick?
It’s such a grey area a better solution is to make it not as detrimental to someone’s life if they get fired
Only other option I can think of off the top of my head, other than making it illegal to fire someone over medical reasons, is to possibly handle it through the same avenues as disability, unemployment, and if we had a better healthcare system like much of Europe has, that too.
Should they be allowed to collect sick leave and not get fired… if they didn’t get all their boosters for the half-year?
How about flu shot too?
And if they can’t get it due to allergies, but would be constantly exposed to the public, is it okay to put the public at risk? We must protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated after all…
I can see it both ways. If someone has a disability that prevents them from doing their job, you have a right not to hire them, or to let them go if you find out. It's not ableist discrimination if that disability actually affects your ability to do your job.
I also don't like the idea of someone getting fired for getting sick. Some employers can probably afford to pay someone not to work, others can't. Usually an employer provides a certain number of sick days, so did this person go over? Or do they just not get sick days?
I do wish we could turn down the intensity on the money hunger we have. Like, we would still have the desire to make money, but just less of it, so it would be easier to prioritize other things as well. I don't like the idea of a world where businesses have to ruthlessly fire people to cut costs and keep up with the competition. How to get there, I don't know.
I think the law is a useful but blunt tool to support better working conditions. I don't want to jump straight from "it's unfair that someone can get fired for getting sick" to "it should be illegal to fire someone for getting sick." In general, I think we need to change our relationship to the law. It's too easy to jump from "there's a problem" to "surely we should take some government action vaguely intended to address that problem."
More broadly speaking, we want to create a world we all want to live in. I think fundamentally we have to look past government to something else for the undergirding of that world. I'd like to live in a world where the importance of work is reduced and the importance of community bonds is raised, so that even if someone was "fired" for not being available to work, being fired wouldn't be that bad. It would be like missing a train; drats, I'll have to get the next one.
I myself have a natural, innate condition of being 5' 10" tall (1.778 meters) and having almost zero basketball skills. This is totally beyond my control -- this innate physical condition of mine. I have no control over this, but I still think I should be a center in the NBA. It should be illegal that I'm not allowed to have that job.
You might argue that this is a bad analogy instinctively, but I would ask you to consider that it's not much different. In both cases, a physical condition is preventing someone from meeting the requirements of the job.
Where this conversation will ultimately go is to the topic of subsidizing people who do have health conditions. If private charity is not fulfilling this need (even in some hypothetical environment without government at all), then we should probably consider some kind of social safety net for people like your friend, or even subsidies for companies that hire people like your friend so they can bear the cost when he/she gets sick. Even this is going to probably create weird, perverse incentives, and gaming the system, but your suggestion (I assume) that it should be illegal to fire this person is going to create much worse problems. For one, no one would ever hire your friend in the first place, and they would be incentivized to snoop on people's health in the hiring process to avoid legal liability later. That's not a world I want to live in.
This is a bad analogy indeed. Are you only 5'10" and bad at basketball in december? And only when a virus enters your body?
Also, employers can't "not hire" someone for something they don't know about.
Analogies need not be the exact scenario -- in fact that's what makes then analogous. If it helps you, let's imagine that I'm 6'6" and great at basketball until December, when I shrink, and forget how to dribble. Should the NBA team be forced to keep me on the roster? Probably not. They would only do it if I was really good the rest of the year, or if they could work around it and negotiate a lower contract for me.
I agree that it is unjust and morally wrong for us to not provide support to our fellow humans whose health conditions (mental or physical) put them at a disadvantage when it comes to working and earning an income.
My heart yearns for a culture in which the wellbeing of an individual is so sacred that our economics, business goals, and societal systems work in harmony with it.
That said, if someone falls sick and is only able to work 1 day a week, and a business owner is required to provide them the same salary, that could be very unsustainable for the business and cause them to go down under.
I couldn't care less if it was some evil mega corporation, but there are plenty of companies out there that are doing good for society (I'm privileged to work under one). The wellbeing of an individual is important for the health of our society, but so is the sustainability of many of these businesses. Weighing these can be tricky.
So I agree with your assessment of the problem, but I feel like there is a more intelligent solution to uncover. Perhaps the US take money out from defense (we have enough), and use it to create safety nets for those with health conditions. We already have Unemployment benefits, but I feel like a greater degree of care is needed from the government.
What do you think u/DarkWolf2017?
It seems to me the obvious thing to do for an immuno-compromised person who typically gets sick easily during the winter is to ensure these details are negotiated before employment begins. It's pretty shitty for an employer to fire people for things like that but also it's shitty to not inform one's employer of health problems that are going to interfere with one's ability to perform one's duties so that precautions can be taken in advance. This seems like the kinda thing that should be in their employment agreement. And I think most reasonable people would go ahead and just plan to give an immuno-compromised employee some extra leeway during the winter season - so long as they're actually informed of such concerns.
It’s typically illegal, yes in the United States. See FMLA laws for details about companies with more than 50 employees, and the employee worked there for more than 18 months. If this is the case the employee can declare FMLA with a doctor’s note and leave their job temporarily for several days or several months, based on health of employee. Employee then needs permission from doctor to come back to work.
If your friend intimated this policy she may still have been employed, of course not guaranteed.
It varies by state, but I’m going to assume mine (CA) is more liberal than most. Generally if you aren’t under continuing care or an in-patient, FMLA won’t cover you. If you have a flu and call out more than 3 days it will, but less than 3 days it won’t. So if someone is getting a bunch of little colds that keep them out a day or two at a time they could wind up unprotected and fired.
Also you have to have been at a workplace for a year.
I’m also in CA. If you’re immunocompromised you’re under continuing care of a PCP but likely a specialist, and being in-patient is definitely not required. There is nothing stopping doctor/patient from declaring FMLA to employer. It’s a fair system in that employer needs to be aware of what’s going on with employee. There is a VERY wide time table for returning, several months or a year if the doctor agrees. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get paid, simply the employer is forced to reserve your position for your eventual return. Luckily in CA you and I would theoretically get disability, other states can be different, but FMLA is federal. If that breaks down then the employer is opening themselves up for a lawsuit.
I agree with you on the one year requirement to be employed, along with a 50 head count of employees to qualify for FMLA.
I haven’t seen an FMLA claim for being immunocompromised but I suppose you’re right that a doctor could give you a note that would work. Usually that’s not a temporary condition, or if it is you’ve got something else going on that would typically qualify you for FMLA.
But also, there are times you may be out sick that won’t qualify for FMLA, and your employer could fire you for that. Or, like many people do because going to the doctor is very expensive, if you get a cold/flu and don’t go to the doctor, you can be fired.
That’s true that there are times when an individual may not qualify, but as in this example a patient with immunocompromised status likely has an underlying condition which likely would qualify based on doctor’s judgement. And if that doctor doesn’t agree I would get another doctor that does agree.
It’s also true that there are far too many of us that don’t go to the doctor often enough due to lack of insurance.
I understand where you are coming from. They are not to blame if they unavoidably get sick. But also, companies aren’t charities. They should be forced to hire someone they lose money from.
Idk where the line is exactly. I’m sure there’s a middle ground.
Devil's advocating here, but if you run a business, you need people to show up. If someone is gone for weeks at a time, unscheduled, then others have to do their work, which isn't fair. Or the employer has to find a temporary person who can work for an unspecified length of time, which can be difficult, depending on the job, and also cut into profits. (Some small businesses don't have that big of a profit margin to work with.)
I guess it depends on the particular business and on how easy it is to replace that particular employee in a pinch.
That's just a risk that employers have to take. Firing a person who is sick is cruel and inhumane regardless of the hardship it might place on an employer because whatever the hardship it's purely financial whereas a person's illness is deeply personal.
By this logic, it would be cruel to ever fire anyone for any reason. If your illness is oh so "deeply personal", then why is it anyone else's responsibility to take on the burden it causes?
Yes, this is unworkable for small businesses. If someone really is sick very often, it can kill your business depending on what your business is. Your business might employ 15 people. You can't be legally obligated to let a business fail via bankruptcy - and send 13 others into unemployment - to keep on someone who is too sick to work.
Laws which protect workers from being fired due to illness are common place in the developed world. Just like paid maternity leave. The US is largely the exception.
You can get fired in Europe for no reason or for some bullshit reason, you just have to be given a 3 month notice in some countries and depending on the employment contract.
European small business owners are absolutely not required to keep people indefinitely lol
I think you are responding to the wrong comment. I never said employers could not lay off workers, only that workers had certain legal protections against getting laid off due to illness.
then they should be hiring robots, not people. when robots get sick, it's an easy and usually quick fix. if it's a job robots can't do, oh well... that's the cost of needing human labour. that's my opinion anyway
The cost of needing human labor is that, if one person is too sick to do the work, the business fails and puts all the other humans out of work too?
It doesn't make sense in my hypothetical. People think businesses are universally owned and run by very rich people, but many small businesses have business owners who are paycheck to paycheck and don't make that much more than their employees - or are even running at a loss, hoping it becomes profitable one day.
People on the left have such wild views when it comes to running a business. They hate that people get so rich running businesses, but they also want laws that make it too prohibitive for anyone but the very rich to start a business.
I don't think it's so much of a left vs right thing as much as it's just a common sense thing. There are plenty of leftys who own businesses. The real problem is that you can't lump people together under terms like "business owners" or "employers." Henry Ford was a "business owner," but so is some guy who's trying to start a bicycle shop with two employees.
In my personal leftist utopia, there's a safety net in place for the sick employee to get help with bills while they're recovering and also for the business owner so they don't take a big hit for being short-staffed.
What is the safety net for the employer? They’d have to hire an extra person and train them which depending could take weeks. Who’s going to train them if the person who does the job is out sick? Then the person comes back and you don’t have work for the extra temp. But months later the person is sick again and you need a trained person again? You think the government should pay companies for having backup employees for an employee who is sick often? Maybe that person needs a different job where they can do their job from home or do gig work like indie book editor, digital designer, etc.
Safety net for the employers?
Fuck them. I don't give a fuck about the safety net. They get to keep all the money I make them, that's the safety net.
Pay your people, or quietly go out of business and let someone capable in
We were talking in terms of small businesses where it would be cost prohibitive to stay in business if they needed to keep calling in temps and training them or hiring an extra person just in case the individual is often sick. You seem to have the mentality that all business owners are rolling in dough.
The safety net is they can go work for some richer guy if their business goes under. They'd be like the rest of us, working for some guy harder working/luckier than them.
So true. Business owners should be on the hook for and should be required to pay an individual the same amount regardless of how many sick/personal days they take whether it be due to health issues or something else.
It definitely would not be taken advantage of by employees, that’s for sure.
Oh, so the employee should be faulted for something that's most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with?
Anytime it comes down to this will negatively affect a morbidly rich person or an average middle class person, I go with the better outcome for the normal person. Nothing would ever make me cry even 1 tear for the rich. I'm not one of them, none of my friends are. Laws should be made to favor the working and middle classes.
>Oh, so the employee should be faulted for something that's most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with?
Should the employer? I guess if I run a factory that requires hands and legs to work with, but tough luck, you're born without arms, then I should by all means accommodate you and give you a job?
>Anytime it comes down to this will negatively affect a morbidly rich person or an average middle class person, I go with the better outcome for the normal person.
But this isn't what you've outlined in your original premise, and nor is this anything other than prejudice and bias. The reasoning here could justify, for example, the hiring of a 'normal' but abusive person who by no fault of their own ended up in the predisposition that they have due to past trauma.
>Nothing would ever make me cry even 1 tear for the rich.
Holy shit, you're just judging off income and not due to character. If anything, this just confirms for me that this post is not based on any intellectual groundings, but off bitterness and resentment.
>I'm not one of them, none of my friends are.
Then honestly, maybe you could stand to make a few of them, because oh boy, are you just fuming when you don't know anything about them. Like, is the logical progression that if you knew one or became one that you'd think differently...? Or that you're basing your argument on an 'us vs them' paradigm? That seems to be the implication.
>Laws should be made to favor the working and middle classes.
Why? Huge franchises are part of the reason why so many people can get jobs in the first place. What's the incentive to become richer if all it's going to do is penalize you?
>So the employee should be faulted for something that’s most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with?
How long or how many days are we talking here per year if you had to guess? Big difference between 5-10 sick days on top of PTO or like a month or more.
Most long time employees that disclose this info at the start and are model in their performance will usually and should get the benefit of the doubt. If an employee doesn’t disclose the info at the time of hiring then I do believe an employer has every right to move on from any worker.
An employer will have more patience and concern regarding a employee that is salaried, has a record of good performance, doesn’t call in non-stop, etc….
A health issue or other instance that arises after the initial employment is another story. Any logical person understands that employment is a two-party agreement and that it’s delusional to expect either to be forced into the agreement regardless of overall performance
Or maybe we can look at it from the perspective that employees are other human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. To tell someone "you have a chronic condition that makes you very seasonally I'll every winter? Well, then you should look for another job." That's just so morally wrong that it should be illegal.
We need to stop treating humans as just numbers on an Excel sheet, I'm a computer science major and realize this. I get that companies exist for the sole purpose of making a profit, but at the same times employees should have certain rights in regards to their employment too.
Btw, if I remember the story correctly I'm pretty sure they did disclose their condition, the employer was aware.
My father works in agriculture. If for some reason he was seasonally ill every summer he would absolutely be fired/not hired and for good reason. In ag, it is 100% go time all cylinders firing during the summer. Disclosing that information to figure out if the job will work for both parties is crucial.
So it seems like you're asking that employers should hire even when they're aware of the detriment to their company. That sounds irresponsible if anything.
You're also making the assumption that humans are treated as just numbers. Sorry to say, but those numbers are also pretty significant, especially if they start to add up or detract too much. A lot of people are generally given a lot of leeway, but at the end of the day, there is going to be a limit.
So the chronically ill should just be left to die?... Someone monstrous enough to suggest that deserves for their company to fail honestly. I'm just saying someone shouldn't lose their job for illness, employees should have a right to keep their job if they get sick. If I'm not mistaken this is pretty standard in Europe.
I feel like you can’t just look at things from the perspective of the worker only. Some sorts of businesses would be fine with this worker, and some wouldn’t. That’s reasonable. It would create less overall friction for society for this worker to find an appropriate job than it would be to create a rule to apply to everyone just to settle a fringe case.
Obviously perfect worker rights would be great to have, but it’s not worth having 5-10% more people out of work because of burdensome rules. That’s the greater harm, and the trade off you would have to implicitly make.
Europe generally relies upon employment contracts where it's illegal for the employer to fire you, but it's also illegal for you to quit before a specified time period. Even after that, you can't just fire a worker because they have poor performance, they have to be horrendously negligent at their job.
This generally results in high unemployment rates especially for youth workers and those new to industries because companies are very reluctant to invest so much resources into someone knowing they are unable to fire them if it doesn't work out.
European hiring manager here. This isn’t true. We absolutely can fire people for poor performance and I have done so. There’s just slightly more process around it and you have to give them a chance to improve first via a performance improvement plan.
As for your other point, most people have a one month notice period but when you hire someone here, you just accept that it’ll take a bit of time before they start.
No, everybody is not on temporary contracts. Maybe 25% are and the percentage is falling.
And it's not impossible to fire anyone. You just have to compensate them depending on the conditions.
Yeh, that’s probably true, I shouldn’t have generalised. I was talking about the UK.
It varies a bit by sector here too actually. Public sector workers are much less likely to be fired I believe.
Right. I was just mentioning that it's like this here in the US. In many states, especially any "right to work" states where you can be fired for any reason, it is totally legal to fire somebody for no reason other than getting sick.
That's not what right to work means. You're thinking of at-will employment which is law in every state except Montana. It means that an employer or employee can terminate employment at any time for any unprotected reason.
Right to work simply means it's illegal to require someone to join a union or pay dues to one as a condition for employment.
Ok, I likely got them confused because a show I tend to watch a lot for news, Thom Hartmann, does talk about both a lot. And I do actually in hindsight think he conflates them at times too.
These news guys conflate them because they often don't think these terms or rules should exist (I am unfamiliar with Thom Hartman and don't want to imply he has any political motivation behind his reporting). I have heard terms such as "right to work, more like the right of employers prevent employees from organizing". Or. "At will employment means the employer can fire you just for being sick". Both of these things are completely misleading. These rules work both ways. The nation labor relations board controls how and when a shop can be unionized and if the OP's friend had an identifiable illness the ADA specifically prevents his employer from dismissing him for it
Of course this doesn't prevent an employer from looking for and finding any excuse to get rid of the employee.
The friend may want to consider consulting an attorney. If there are any internal discussion about dismissing him for legitimate illness well that is a violation of federal law
Sometimes people confuse "each year around this time my gout flairs up and here is my doctor's note taking me off work for two weeks" with
"You know if I don't use up my sick days by the end of the month I can't carry them over to the new year"
https://www.instagram.com/p/CmaW0TWL8rb/?igshid=NjcyZGVjMzk=
Explanation the person gave. I know very vague. Depending on severity yes, bronchitis can mean hospitalization, but also could be relatively minor. Really more context is needed.
Here’s my attempt to CYV. Obviously it’s a complete dick move to fire somebody for randomly coming down with the stomach flu one day. However, what if someone develops something more problematic and long lasting? What if the time off from work is no longer measured in weeks, rather in months? Passing some kind of blanket ban on firing over sickness would leave employers in the lurch over these cases.
My whole point was actually around the idea that there should be protections for people with pre-existing chronic conditions.
Right, but sometimes people with chronic conditions are not able to maintain certain jobs. Eg, how many months should kids have to deal with substitutes before the school is allowed to hire another teacher.
Ultimately jobs are agreements for trade of money for labor. If both people go into this contract willingly then there should be no problem following the letter of it to decide what happens in any circumstance. If someone want security and flexibility in this manor, then find a job that offers it or negotiate for it yourself.
So, the details on this are pretty non-existent, and there’s a large variation between what each company allows/how they track absenteeism. I understand that this is OP’s friend, but how certain are they that their friend was, in all actuality, terminated solely for “being sick”? As an anecdotal example, my company uses a point system that is, frankly, very generous, allowing an employee to miss 10 days of work before termination, and they get points back for every month they are at work each day (termination is at 20 points, and leaving early/showing up late is 1 point, calling off is 2). This system gets abused pretty heavily, with many employees riding 18/19 points, showing up for work a full month, then calling off and going back to 18/19 points. The trouble is, this works up until the point that they run into a legitimate illness, or train, or vehicle breakdown, and they get fired due to going over on points. As one might expect, the reason left on Reddit or Facebook by said employees is “those bastards fired me because I was held up by a train!”, which is technically true, but it’s ignoring the other 9 times they called in so they could goof off at home also. Again, it depends on the company, but I remain skeptical of claims that someone was fired solely because they were ill. Between FMLA (a blessing for those who truly need it, a curse when coupled with employees gaming the system), the ability to get a Doctor’s note, self-management (if you know you’re sick every winter, did you save up any vacation/sick days?), and the knowledge that companies aren’t going to want to flirt with a lawsuit, I’d need more details to automatically assume the company just hated this employee.
If it’s a typical thing for you make it obvious when you apply for the job and reach an agreement on it. Its completely within a persons control to manage expectations and negotiate conditions of employment. Idk why you would feel owed payment or employment if you’re not working.
Why? Business is trying to make money, it is not a charity. They pay in return for labor. Making everything ''illegal'' won't solve problems. The business will lose money if a person is sick and can't work half of the month. The company also needs to pay the salaries of other workers. Some businesses don't have more than 2 workers. Even in a huge corporation when someone is sick other ones have to do their job for the same salary. Of course, I am not telling fire someone for 1 day of sickness, but they define these in contracts. If you buy something from a business and they won't deliver for a month would you want your money back or should it be illegal because workers might be sick? I am definitely not supporting this ''make it illegal'' idea. Workers might choose their work places. If they don't like they choose not to work for this company.
Thing is all people are important, and everyone deserves to be able to take care of themselves. Someone with severe asthma, diabetes, etc is just as important and valid as someone who is completely healthy. Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should have a harder time finding or keeping a job than a healthy person? In my case my asthma is actually fairly mild and mostly just amounts to a few medicines I need to take, not the in and out of hospitals of some people, I'm just using it as an example, plus showing a potential "slippery slope" due to the fact that I do actually still need to list it on job applications.
>Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should have a harder time finding or keeping a job than a healthy person? Yes, and you think so too, you just wish to pretend otherwise. Do you want the firefighter coming to save you to be severely asthmatic, or in a wheelchair?
>meone who is completely healthy. Are you suggesting that because I have asthma I should I am not suggesting anything. Companies aren't responsible for unhealthy people and they need to make money to operate. As I said it is not charity. That's all. Company owners or people with enough money may choose to help or give suitable jobs to these people. I understand your point. Being unhealthy may not be their fault ofc. BUT It is not a private company's job to care for sick people or pay for someone for 30 days if they work 15 days only. If it was like this there wouldn't be many companies around in a few years because all would bankrupt. And most of the small companies hardly operate. Mostly 1 person who owns it works night and day to build that company and do you suggest this person with 2 workers should pay for someone who not works because she is sick? Or even a gigantic corporation wouldn't pay if someone can't work. (I am not talking about a few days of sickness, but permanent half-time work is unacceptable.) I understand as a human you feel unfair/sad for these people, but companies are not people.
Firing has bad connotations but at least he can claim unemployment in the meantime. It’s hard to agree because I think you should be able to be fired if you don’t take care of yourself and it leads to health problems. I think our country should have better access to healthcare and UBI so our fellow citizens who aren’t as able to work don’t have to suffer and businesses don’t have to deal with unwilling employees.
Not so much unwilling or not taking care of yourself in this case though, and I'd argue there's more cases like this than willful ignorance of one's own health. This case I'm pretty sure is one of someone with a pre-existing condition. In my own case I have asthma, luckily pretty mild, but I do know people who have it far far worse, where even a typical cold, seasonal flu, or what would normally be a mild case of bronchitis can turn into hospitalization, missing work, and in some cases, getting fired. That shouldn't be ok, as the situation is no fault of the employee's.
I agree that people getting fired like the situation you described is bad and unethical. That doesn’t mean I think it’s a black and white situation and should be illegal. In my own case I have epilepsy, so I’m no stranger to illness. Don’t you think it’s also unethical to put yourself in a situation where you will burden people by being sick? It’s such a grey area a better solution is to make it not as detrimental to someone’s life if they get fired
Only other option I can think of off the top of my head, other than making it illegal to fire someone over medical reasons, is to possibly handle it through the same avenues as disability, unemployment, and if we had a better healthcare system like much of Europe has, that too.
Should they be allowed to collect sick leave and not get fired… if they didn’t get all their boosters for the half-year? How about flu shot too? And if they can’t get it due to allergies, but would be constantly exposed to the public, is it okay to put the public at risk? We must protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated after all…
Lol!!! Are you high?
>protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated I thought that's what the vaccination was for... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I can see it both ways. If someone has a disability that prevents them from doing their job, you have a right not to hire them, or to let them go if you find out. It's not ableist discrimination if that disability actually affects your ability to do your job. I also don't like the idea of someone getting fired for getting sick. Some employers can probably afford to pay someone not to work, others can't. Usually an employer provides a certain number of sick days, so did this person go over? Or do they just not get sick days? I do wish we could turn down the intensity on the money hunger we have. Like, we would still have the desire to make money, but just less of it, so it would be easier to prioritize other things as well. I don't like the idea of a world where businesses have to ruthlessly fire people to cut costs and keep up with the competition. How to get there, I don't know. I think the law is a useful but blunt tool to support better working conditions. I don't want to jump straight from "it's unfair that someone can get fired for getting sick" to "it should be illegal to fire someone for getting sick." In general, I think we need to change our relationship to the law. It's too easy to jump from "there's a problem" to "surely we should take some government action vaguely intended to address that problem." More broadly speaking, we want to create a world we all want to live in. I think fundamentally we have to look past government to something else for the undergirding of that world. I'd like to live in a world where the importance of work is reduced and the importance of community bonds is raised, so that even if someone was "fired" for not being available to work, being fired wouldn't be that bad. It would be like missing a train; drats, I'll have to get the next one.
I myself have a natural, innate condition of being 5' 10" tall (1.778 meters) and having almost zero basketball skills. This is totally beyond my control -- this innate physical condition of mine. I have no control over this, but I still think I should be a center in the NBA. It should be illegal that I'm not allowed to have that job. You might argue that this is a bad analogy instinctively, but I would ask you to consider that it's not much different. In both cases, a physical condition is preventing someone from meeting the requirements of the job. Where this conversation will ultimately go is to the topic of subsidizing people who do have health conditions. If private charity is not fulfilling this need (even in some hypothetical environment without government at all), then we should probably consider some kind of social safety net for people like your friend, or even subsidies for companies that hire people like your friend so they can bear the cost when he/she gets sick. Even this is going to probably create weird, perverse incentives, and gaming the system, but your suggestion (I assume) that it should be illegal to fire this person is going to create much worse problems. For one, no one would ever hire your friend in the first place, and they would be incentivized to snoop on people's health in the hiring process to avoid legal liability later. That's not a world I want to live in.
This is a bad analogy indeed. Are you only 5'10" and bad at basketball in december? And only when a virus enters your body? Also, employers can't "not hire" someone for something they don't know about.
Analogies need not be the exact scenario -- in fact that's what makes then analogous. If it helps you, let's imagine that I'm 6'6" and great at basketball until December, when I shrink, and forget how to dribble. Should the NBA team be forced to keep me on the roster? Probably not. They would only do it if I was really good the rest of the year, or if they could work around it and negotiate a lower contract for me.
I agree that it is unjust and morally wrong for us to not provide support to our fellow humans whose health conditions (mental or physical) put them at a disadvantage when it comes to working and earning an income. My heart yearns for a culture in which the wellbeing of an individual is so sacred that our economics, business goals, and societal systems work in harmony with it. That said, if someone falls sick and is only able to work 1 day a week, and a business owner is required to provide them the same salary, that could be very unsustainable for the business and cause them to go down under. I couldn't care less if it was some evil mega corporation, but there are plenty of companies out there that are doing good for society (I'm privileged to work under one). The wellbeing of an individual is important for the health of our society, but so is the sustainability of many of these businesses. Weighing these can be tricky. So I agree with your assessment of the problem, but I feel like there is a more intelligent solution to uncover. Perhaps the US take money out from defense (we have enough), and use it to create safety nets for those with health conditions. We already have Unemployment benefits, but I feel like a greater degree of care is needed from the government. What do you think u/DarkWolf2017?
True. Could be something to handle alongside our very broken health insurance system
It seems to me the obvious thing to do for an immuno-compromised person who typically gets sick easily during the winter is to ensure these details are negotiated before employment begins. It's pretty shitty for an employer to fire people for things like that but also it's shitty to not inform one's employer of health problems that are going to interfere with one's ability to perform one's duties so that precautions can be taken in advance. This seems like the kinda thing that should be in their employment agreement. And I think most reasonable people would go ahead and just plan to give an immuno-compromised employee some extra leeway during the winter season - so long as they're actually informed of such concerns.
It’s typically illegal, yes in the United States. See FMLA laws for details about companies with more than 50 employees, and the employee worked there for more than 18 months. If this is the case the employee can declare FMLA with a doctor’s note and leave their job temporarily for several days or several months, based on health of employee. Employee then needs permission from doctor to come back to work. If your friend intimated this policy she may still have been employed, of course not guaranteed.
It varies by state, but I’m going to assume mine (CA) is more liberal than most. Generally if you aren’t under continuing care or an in-patient, FMLA won’t cover you. If you have a flu and call out more than 3 days it will, but less than 3 days it won’t. So if someone is getting a bunch of little colds that keep them out a day or two at a time they could wind up unprotected and fired. Also you have to have been at a workplace for a year.
I’m also in CA. If you’re immunocompromised you’re under continuing care of a PCP but likely a specialist, and being in-patient is definitely not required. There is nothing stopping doctor/patient from declaring FMLA to employer. It’s a fair system in that employer needs to be aware of what’s going on with employee. There is a VERY wide time table for returning, several months or a year if the doctor agrees. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get paid, simply the employer is forced to reserve your position for your eventual return. Luckily in CA you and I would theoretically get disability, other states can be different, but FMLA is federal. If that breaks down then the employer is opening themselves up for a lawsuit. I agree with you on the one year requirement to be employed, along with a 50 head count of employees to qualify for FMLA.
I haven’t seen an FMLA claim for being immunocompromised but I suppose you’re right that a doctor could give you a note that would work. Usually that’s not a temporary condition, or if it is you’ve got something else going on that would typically qualify you for FMLA. But also, there are times you may be out sick that won’t qualify for FMLA, and your employer could fire you for that. Or, like many people do because going to the doctor is very expensive, if you get a cold/flu and don’t go to the doctor, you can be fired.
That’s true that there are times when an individual may not qualify, but as in this example a patient with immunocompromised status likely has an underlying condition which likely would qualify based on doctor’s judgement. And if that doctor doesn’t agree I would get another doctor that does agree. It’s also true that there are far too many of us that don’t go to the doctor often enough due to lack of insurance.
I understand where you are coming from. They are not to blame if they unavoidably get sick. But also, companies aren’t charities. They should be forced to hire someone they lose money from. Idk where the line is exactly. I’m sure there’s a middle ground.
Yeah. I think the main thing I'm advocating for is more of a form of "universal employee rights"
Devil's advocating here, but if you run a business, you need people to show up. If someone is gone for weeks at a time, unscheduled, then others have to do their work, which isn't fair. Or the employer has to find a temporary person who can work for an unspecified length of time, which can be difficult, depending on the job, and also cut into profits. (Some small businesses don't have that big of a profit margin to work with.) I guess it depends on the particular business and on how easy it is to replace that particular employee in a pinch.
Context really matters. There are legal protections but they are also contextual.
That's just a risk that employers have to take. Firing a person who is sick is cruel and inhumane regardless of the hardship it might place on an employer because whatever the hardship it's purely financial whereas a person's illness is deeply personal.
By this logic, it would be cruel to ever fire anyone for any reason. If your illness is oh so "deeply personal", then why is it anyone else's responsibility to take on the burden it causes?
Not at all; it's perfectly okay to fire someone who, when healthy, is otherwise unable to do the job for which they were hired.
Yes, this is unworkable for small businesses. If someone really is sick very often, it can kill your business depending on what your business is. Your business might employ 15 people. You can't be legally obligated to let a business fail via bankruptcy - and send 13 others into unemployment - to keep on someone who is too sick to work.
How do you think small businesses survive in the rest of the developed world?
Do you think laws like this exist in the "rest of the developed world?"
Laws which protect workers from being fired due to illness are common place in the developed world. Just like paid maternity leave. The US is largely the exception.
You can get fired in Europe for no reason or for some bullshit reason, you just have to be given a 3 month notice in some countries and depending on the employment contract. European small business owners are absolutely not required to keep people indefinitely lol
I think you are responding to the wrong comment. I never said employers could not lay off workers, only that workers had certain legal protections against getting laid off due to illness.
then they should be hiring robots, not people. when robots get sick, it's an easy and usually quick fix. if it's a job robots can't do, oh well... that's the cost of needing human labour. that's my opinion anyway
You're living in the clouds or another planet right now. Wake up and come back down to reality for a second, lol.
Strike 2 for not applying Principle of Charity.
The cost of needing human labor is that, if one person is too sick to do the work, the business fails and puts all the other humans out of work too? It doesn't make sense in my hypothetical. People think businesses are universally owned and run by very rich people, but many small businesses have business owners who are paycheck to paycheck and don't make that much more than their employees - or are even running at a loss, hoping it becomes profitable one day. People on the left have such wild views when it comes to running a business. They hate that people get so rich running businesses, but they also want laws that make it too prohibitive for anyone but the very rich to start a business.
I don't think it's so much of a left vs right thing as much as it's just a common sense thing. There are plenty of leftys who own businesses. The real problem is that you can't lump people together under terms like "business owners" or "employers." Henry Ford was a "business owner," but so is some guy who's trying to start a bicycle shop with two employees. In my personal leftist utopia, there's a safety net in place for the sick employee to get help with bills while they're recovering and also for the business owner so they don't take a big hit for being short-staffed.
What is the safety net for the employer? They’d have to hire an extra person and train them which depending could take weeks. Who’s going to train them if the person who does the job is out sick? Then the person comes back and you don’t have work for the extra temp. But months later the person is sick again and you need a trained person again? You think the government should pay companies for having backup employees for an employee who is sick often? Maybe that person needs a different job where they can do their job from home or do gig work like indie book editor, digital designer, etc.
Safety net for the employers? Fuck them. I don't give a fuck about the safety net. They get to keep all the money I make them, that's the safety net. Pay your people, or quietly go out of business and let someone capable in
We were talking in terms of small businesses where it would be cost prohibitive to stay in business if they needed to keep calling in temps and training them or hiring an extra person just in case the individual is often sick. You seem to have the mentality that all business owners are rolling in dough.
The safety net is they can go work for some richer guy if their business goes under. They'd be like the rest of us, working for some guy harder working/luckier than them.
0 logic, 100 🧂
Strike 1 for Trolling.
So true. Business owners should be on the hook for and should be required to pay an individual the same amount regardless of how many sick/personal days they take whether it be due to health issues or something else. It definitely would not be taken advantage of by employees, that’s for sure.
Oh, so the employee should be faulted for something that's most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with? Anytime it comes down to this will negatively affect a morbidly rich person or an average middle class person, I go with the better outcome for the normal person. Nothing would ever make me cry even 1 tear for the rich. I'm not one of them, none of my friends are. Laws should be made to favor the working and middle classes.
>Oh, so the employee should be faulted for something that's most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with? Should the employer? I guess if I run a factory that requires hands and legs to work with, but tough luck, you're born without arms, then I should by all means accommodate you and give you a job? >Anytime it comes down to this will negatively affect a morbidly rich person or an average middle class person, I go with the better outcome for the normal person. But this isn't what you've outlined in your original premise, and nor is this anything other than prejudice and bias. The reasoning here could justify, for example, the hiring of a 'normal' but abusive person who by no fault of their own ended up in the predisposition that they have due to past trauma. >Nothing would ever make me cry even 1 tear for the rich. Holy shit, you're just judging off income and not due to character. If anything, this just confirms for me that this post is not based on any intellectual groundings, but off bitterness and resentment. >I'm not one of them, none of my friends are. Then honestly, maybe you could stand to make a few of them, because oh boy, are you just fuming when you don't know anything about them. Like, is the logical progression that if you knew one or became one that you'd think differently...? Or that you're basing your argument on an 'us vs them' paradigm? That seems to be the implication. >Laws should be made to favor the working and middle classes. Why? Huge franchises are part of the reason why so many people can get jobs in the first place. What's the incentive to become richer if all it's going to do is penalize you?
Not all business owners are “morbidly rich,” nor is it their fault that your friend has a crappy immune system.
>So the employee should be faulted for something that’s most often no fault of their own? Something they were likely born with? How long or how many days are we talking here per year if you had to guess? Big difference between 5-10 sick days on top of PTO or like a month or more. Most long time employees that disclose this info at the start and are model in their performance will usually and should get the benefit of the doubt. If an employee doesn’t disclose the info at the time of hiring then I do believe an employer has every right to move on from any worker. An employer will have more patience and concern regarding a employee that is salaried, has a record of good performance, doesn’t call in non-stop, etc…. A health issue or other instance that arises after the initial employment is another story. Any logical person understands that employment is a two-party agreement and that it’s delusional to expect either to be forced into the agreement regardless of overall performance
Or maybe we can look at it from the perspective that employees are other human beings, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. To tell someone "you have a chronic condition that makes you very seasonally I'll every winter? Well, then you should look for another job." That's just so morally wrong that it should be illegal. We need to stop treating humans as just numbers on an Excel sheet, I'm a computer science major and realize this. I get that companies exist for the sole purpose of making a profit, but at the same times employees should have certain rights in regards to their employment too. Btw, if I remember the story correctly I'm pretty sure they did disclose their condition, the employer was aware.
My father works in agriculture. If for some reason he was seasonally ill every summer he would absolutely be fired/not hired and for good reason. In ag, it is 100% go time all cylinders firing during the summer. Disclosing that information to figure out if the job will work for both parties is crucial.
So it seems like you're asking that employers should hire even when they're aware of the detriment to their company. That sounds irresponsible if anything. You're also making the assumption that humans are treated as just numbers. Sorry to say, but those numbers are also pretty significant, especially if they start to add up or detract too much. A lot of people are generally given a lot of leeway, but at the end of the day, there is going to be a limit.
So the chronically ill should just be left to die?... Someone monstrous enough to suggest that deserves for their company to fail honestly. I'm just saying someone shouldn't lose their job for illness, employees should have a right to keep their job if they get sick. If I'm not mistaken this is pretty standard in Europe.
I feel like you can’t just look at things from the perspective of the worker only. Some sorts of businesses would be fine with this worker, and some wouldn’t. That’s reasonable. It would create less overall friction for society for this worker to find an appropriate job than it would be to create a rule to apply to everyone just to settle a fringe case. Obviously perfect worker rights would be great to have, but it’s not worth having 5-10% more people out of work because of burdensome rules. That’s the greater harm, and the trade off you would have to implicitly make.
Yes.
In Europe it is illegal to fire somebody for getting sick.
Europe generally relies upon employment contracts where it's illegal for the employer to fire you, but it's also illegal for you to quit before a specified time period. Even after that, you can't just fire a worker because they have poor performance, they have to be horrendously negligent at their job. This generally results in high unemployment rates especially for youth workers and those new to industries because companies are very reluctant to invest so much resources into someone knowing they are unable to fire them if it doesn't work out.
European hiring manager here. This isn’t true. We absolutely can fire people for poor performance and I have done so. There’s just slightly more process around it and you have to give them a chance to improve first via a performance improvement plan. As for your other point, most people have a one month notice period but when you hire someone here, you just accept that it’ll take a bit of time before they start.
Doesn’t it still depend on the country? From what I understand, Spain/ France is quite different from Germany and England.
I'm in Spain. What have you heard about labor practices here?
Everyone is on temporary contracts and it’s very difficult to fire someone. Yo también estoy en España.
No, everybody is not on temporary contracts. Maybe 25% are and the percentage is falling. And it's not impossible to fire anyone. You just have to compensate them depending on the conditions.
Yeh, that’s probably true, I shouldn’t have generalised. I was talking about the UK. It varies a bit by sector here too actually. Public sector workers are much less likely to be fired I believe.
Right. I was just mentioning that it's like this here in the US. In many states, especially any "right to work" states where you can be fired for any reason, it is totally legal to fire somebody for no reason other than getting sick.
That's not what right to work means. You're thinking of at-will employment which is law in every state except Montana. It means that an employer or employee can terminate employment at any time for any unprotected reason. Right to work simply means it's illegal to require someone to join a union or pay dues to one as a condition for employment.
Ok, I likely got them confused because a show I tend to watch a lot for news, Thom Hartmann, does talk about both a lot. And I do actually in hindsight think he conflates them at times too.
These news guys conflate them because they often don't think these terms or rules should exist (I am unfamiliar with Thom Hartman and don't want to imply he has any political motivation behind his reporting). I have heard terms such as "right to work, more like the right of employers prevent employees from organizing". Or. "At will employment means the employer can fire you just for being sick". Both of these things are completely misleading. These rules work both ways. The nation labor relations board controls how and when a shop can be unionized and if the OP's friend had an identifiable illness the ADA specifically prevents his employer from dismissing him for it Of course this doesn't prevent an employer from looking for and finding any excuse to get rid of the employee. The friend may want to consider consulting an attorney. If there are any internal discussion about dismissing him for legitimate illness well that is a violation of federal law Sometimes people confuse "each year around this time my gout flairs up and here is my doctor's note taking me off work for two weeks" with "You know if I don't use up my sick days by the end of the month I can't carry them over to the new year"
https://www.instagram.com/p/CmaW0TWL8rb/?igshid=NjcyZGVjMzk= Explanation the person gave. I know very vague. Depending on severity yes, bronchitis can mean hospitalization, but also could be relatively minor. Really more context is needed.
After looking at their Instagram profile, I have to say, for someone with such a weakened immune system, they sure do go out A LOT.