This is not a joke
my work self-identifies as having generous sick benefits. in that, sick days earned do not expire. that's the generous part: you can bank many sick days over the years of employment.
the other day i was listening to an elderly (<1 year from "retirement" aka medicare benefits and social security payments) colleague. she had to have a pacemaker installed (the list price for this was $200k, but she's "only" out of pocket about $900). she tentatively took 1 week off to recover and then decided to take an additional week. this triggered a vague email from HR about how she needed to have a doctor's note filled out by the doctor's office (which charges her out of pocket for this service) because it was more than 3 days in a row of sick days. sick days that she has accrued, btw.
so she was in this panic trying to figure out this b.s. paper shuffle because the email from HR said it was to "protect her job". she contacted her supervisor, who of course knows nothing about any of this, but that person contacted someone they knew in HR, who said as long as the supervisor approves, she doesn't need the form filled out.
i was like, "sick days are an earned part of compensation. people should be able to use them however they want and no one's supervisor should have any say in what their employees do with them to protect their health." which was passively agreed upon but recognized as not the way the institution thinks.
this country is fucked and the continued blocking of universal healthcare is a critical mechanism for undermining labor power.
As a non American, even the concept of sick days is baffling to me.
yeah, it's pretty stupid. the amount of control bosses exercise over our lives is perverse and far too much of my sanity is spent pretending to be grateful for their supposed magnanimity for not abusing me to the fullest extent allowed by the law/custom. some have absolutely no clue how much anxiety and animosity they casually generate by whimsically toying with people's real material needs.
i was listening to some left-academic pod about a history of violence in the workplace in the US, and apparently the level of violence in the US has not really changed much over the last hundred years. people used to totally bring guns to work and shoot up the place. but the difference between then and now is how it was directed. they used to shoot supervisors/managers, and take people in charge hostage. the animosity went up the ladder, as it was recognized the bosses were the source of tension. now it's turned outward, so when american's snap they shoot other workers over whatever some newsreader on the tv or the radio told them to get maddest about. it's so grim.
if the workers here ever recognized who their real enemies are and directed their rage and violence accordingly, it would be a feeding frenzy.
It always mystifies me when people shoot up their franchise or branch office or whatever instead of going to the corporate headquarters and putting bullets in the people responsible for their misery, but i guess no or negative class solidarity or :frothingfash: :brainworms: is the explanation after all.
America's "labor standards" compared to almost any other industrialized countries, and even many severely marginalized countries, are appalling. And even the rights that exist on paper are often denied to workers with little or no recourse.
although a cop who just stays home every day claiming to be sick might be the only good cop
Sick with disgust at the existence of their fascist coworkers
this is only semi-related to the post but this is why cops' unions must be opposed even though there is a general sentiment that unions are intrinsically good
we can see that cops are not proletarians even though they work a wage because their existence is diametrically opposed to proletarian interests and subservient to bourgeois interests. cops (who protect private property), hold no utility to proletarians but hold extreme utility to the bourgeois.
non-proletarian unions are not necessarily good. a producer's union is called a cartel. a policemen's union is more accurately referred to as a gang. a landlords' union... i don't know if they actually exist but they wouldn't be good either
cops are not proletarians but they aren't really bourgeois either, they are members of the warrior class, the enforcers of the ruling class' rule.
A regular business tyrant union disguised as a small business tyrant union is a chamber of commerce
Chambers of Commerce are so fucking evil it's breathtaking. If leftists were as violent as fash in the us they'd have to meet by videoconference from thei armored bunkers.
Chicago PD doing praxis by having pigs work as infrequently as possible
Don’t worry, it’s 100% counteracted by taking meaningless overtime
And when they quit they probably get paid out for the unused time
Worse, i'm pretty sure their pension pay out is based on their last year's total pay. They pad things out ridiculously with long make-work hours they might not even show up for, then add all the bennies on top.
Lol imagine being like aight boss I’m gonna take off til the 1st
But Johnson, tomorrows the first
A year from now
Feeling sick I need the next 365 days off I hope you understand
I have unlimited sick days but it's in tech so everybody on your team and especially your manager will just start to hate you if you take too many (you're slowing down your team's path to hitting company goals and metrics) because there's negative class solidarity here
Source: Everybody shit talking people who get sick too often plus my team and especially my manager hating me after I took 2 weeks off for pertussis
Can't whooping cough literally kill people? Fuck techbros, seriously
boy i sure do hope that when one of those pigs gets fired for murdering someone they don't get to cash out all that sick leave as pay. it would be so surprising if they did that too.
