| In short, sick days should be for staying home when you or a family member are sick. They are not for going to the beach, getting a deep-tissue massage (oh, I could use one), or padding retirement payouts.
When you allow employees to carry many sick days over many do not take sick days. Instead they come in to work with colds, flus and other diseases while contagious. This is a danger to their co-workers, their co-workers families, and the public who is relying on these people to do their jobs. Staying home means you don't spread the disease, which means fewer people getting sick and that's a good thing.
It also means, in the long run, higher productivity at work. If you stay home two days and get all better then you can work the other three days of the week at high performance. If you don't stay home then you are probably going to be sick all week and do things like misplace anthrax samples or give out identification cards to underage soon-to-be-drinkers.
People say that staying home when you are sick gets you in bad with the boss. Well, that's because we let it get this way. If you're in a union and you let the bosses get away with making you come in sick, how is that different from them making you work extra hours without compensation? Go to the union and get them to stand up for workers. And where the hell are the union stewards in this? If you see your members sick at work send them the fuck home.
I mean, we have sick days because of unions and the unions aren't enforcing their use. Instead they are fighting to reward people for not staying home sick. How is that doing their job?
There are a few cases of people gaming the system and cashing out huge paydays, sure. They're the poster children for the Sweeney's of the world who demand to end the practice. But in truth they don't cost us too much and the $15K limit already in place from last summer would handle that.
Now, most government workers these days are getting PTOs instead of separating sick and vacation days, so the pressure to protect sick days is not as great. But I feel the same way about vacation days that I do about sick days.
Americans work to damned much, too many damned hours. What we're fighting for here is a system where you are rewarded for over-working yourself, which keeps you from your family, from recreation, from participating in civic activities -- like Blue Jersey or electoral politics!
Face it, the 1% (or, probably, the 20%) absolutely fucking love it that the other 80% or us are overworked, stressed out and terrified of losing our jobs because it makes us into sheep. If we're too tired at the end of the day to go to a public meeting, they can do what they want. If we can't get it together to learn more about the candidates, they can keep running shitheels up the flagpole and get them in Congress or Drumthwacket or wherever else they can help the rich folks out there.
For too long it has been assumed in this country that working 52 weeks is better than working 48, and the people who work 52 should be rewarded. That's not only stupid for the employees, but for the employer! The employees wind up depressed and sick while the employers get less productive employees.
In any sane model employees would be thanked for staying home when they are sick, contagious and less productive. Employers would force their employees to take their vacation time, go be with their families and friends and come back refreshed and ready to work.
While I don't believe that is the intent of Sweeney and Christie, I do believe that is an end result of such a policy change. Not immediate, as supervisors will continue to press people to come in sick and not take vacations. But over time the employees will rise up and say, "Kiss my ass, these days are my compensation and I am taking them." |
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