My last job offered unlimited paid sick leave, no questions asked, and in all my time there I never heard of anyone abusing it. Your assertions are not based in fact.
If we were talking about sick leave only, then I misinterpreted the comment I replied to. I saw "isolate and self-quarantine" as not only sick leave, but also "feels like staying home for any reason at all as long as you work the word 'coronavirus' in".
> no questions asked, and in all my time there I never heard of anyone abusing it
Was your last job entry-level with no college requirement, and paid by the hour? Have you ever worked through a deadly pandemic before? Your defense is based on an extremely narrow experience that might not exactly apply to grocery store workers during a health crisis..
If you are being paid well, being treated well by your employer, you might not abuse paid sick leave. Or have a very low rate of it.
If you are not being paid well, maybe people would abuse the policy more often. I don't think you can really compare one company to another, even in the same industry. Company cultures can lead to vastly different outcomes with the same policy.
And, unless you are in HR, there is no way for you to know if people were abusing this perk. I would be willing to bet at least one person was abusing it, but maybe the company never found out, or, more likely, they didn't broadcast the abuse to everyone in the company.
There may have been someone abusing it, I can only say for sure that it wasn’t anyone I worked with on a daily basis.
I’m one of those who believes that every person, regardless of what the job is, should be well paid and well treated- how much constitutes “well” is a complicated question of course, but as a matter of principle I do find that if the people taking on all these risks is making close to minimum wage, then we are incorrectly pricing their value.
One example is enough to disprove the assertion that paid sick time would necessarily be abused any time it is given, which is what the original post asserted. If you’re going to be pedantic at least be correct. What you’ve done is move the goalposts.
If the workers in question really are taking this kind of risk, and if their jobs really are essential for the functioning of society, then.. maybe they should be really well paid?
Also, to suggest that in the middle of a pandemic, if a person gets sick they should still have to go to work or lose their job flies in the face of logical reason and the recommendations of the cdc.
No one example only proves it is POSSIBLE for paid sick time to not be abused.
It does not ELIMINATE the possibility or even imply it is unlikely.
And in a plague where working puts healthy employee and their families at risk, there is an enormous incentive to not go to work, regardless hazard pay incentives.
BUT I agree:
Paying workers hazard pay is a fair thing to do, assuming the company is capable of doing so.
And paid sick leave for sick people will save lives, again assuming the company is able to.
We can assume Amazon is capable of both.
To eliminate the incentives to abuse that system I would explain to all employees:
(1) You think they deserve hazard pay for staying
(2) You will conditionally offer it to them (or be up front why the business can't)
(3) You think they deserve paid sick leave
(4) You will conditionally offer it to them (or be up front why the business can't)
(5) If you are offering either/both hazard pay and paid sick leave, make it conditional:
Each employee signs a form noting they understand the benefits but also understand they can only work if healthy employees show up, and commit to showing up if healthy.
People tend to act honorably when they feel respected, they have given their word, and see the company is doing everything it can for them.
Despite all that, the incentive for healthy workers to avoid a plague are huge and legitimate, so the hazard and sick pay could still muck everything up. But there is not risk free solution.
If we were talking about sick leave only, then I misinterpreted the comment I replied to. I saw "isolate and self-quarantine" as not only sick leave, but also "feels like staying home for any reason at all as long as you work the word 'coronavirus' in".
> no questions asked, and in all my time there I never heard of anyone abusing it
Was your last job entry-level with no college requirement, and paid by the hour? Have you ever worked through a deadly pandemic before? Your defense is based on an extremely narrow experience that might not exactly apply to grocery store workers during a health crisis..