[notJim]

Companies employ people to do work. That is the fundamental nature of the relationship. Some leeway is to be expected for temporary fluctuations in the work being done. But in the long term, if the work is no longer being performed at the agreed upon level, the company is not obligated to continue paying the person.

In a sense, blaming the company becomes kind of a distraction from the real issue, which is that in the US, we have an extremely thin safety net. One of the reasons getting fired from your tech job is so concerning is that even someone in that job is only a few difficult situations from utter destitution and homelessness. That $4k/mo Seattle mortgage burns through your savings pretty quick, and if you have assets of any kind, you won't get any assistance from the state for disability. Even our unemployment benefits won't keep you afloat for long.

We should be focused on making these things better, not expecting companies to employee people who are unable to work.

[mindslight]

A thousand times this. Expecting companies to be the source of resources that smooth over personal problems actually ends up disempowering workers, who then have to conform to companies' mold in order to receive the benefits. Imagine a similar family situation only the employee was about to get fired for other reasons, and now their health "insurance" has disappeared / skyrocketed as well. As it is, it sounds like OP really needed more routine time off than what Amazon allowed.

Rather than relying on companies as reservoirs of wealth that should be taking care of employees (eg this, healthcare, parental leave, etc), we need to move that wealth outside of corporate control - through a combination of higher compensation, better managing of personal finances, entrenched industry reform, catchall social safety net, etc.

[relaunched]

To your point, corporations would be happy to have the government take over those functions. But, these are solvable problems. For example, there is no doubt that HR knew that long-term and short term disabilities were options. Google has a death benefit for the spouse and kids, under 21. Top tech companies that have money to burn could probably figure out how to keep you on insurance, as a benefit, during leave.

However, whether or not it's an employers' responsibility, is a culture and values thing - especially if the social safety nets are lacking.

[notJim]

If the company has benefits that are available, they should definitely point the employee to them. That is just the humane thing to do in my view. When I had a death in my family a few years ago, I filed to use vacation time, and my boss rejected it, because the company had bereavement leave (I didn't know about it.) That was the right thing to do, because it helped me take advantage of all the available benefits.

And of course, if companies provide these benefits, that is good, especially since they are absent from our broader safety net. But keeping benefits tied to employment has a lot of downsides, and we should try to move away from that.

[kelnos]

> corporations would be happy to have the government take over those functions.

Is this really true? I would think so, too, but if it were, wouldn't we see a flood of companies in the US lobbying Congress to create a government-backed healthcare option, or even single-payer? To the point where it would have been done decades ago, right-wing political ideology be damned?

The cynical part of me wonders if companies like the current situation, since that gives companies more power over their employees.

[Domenic_S]

It was the government themselves that facilitated this situation by freezing wages during WWII. Companies couldn’t compete on salary anymore so they found another lever to pull.

I don’t think companies like or dislike the situation, it’s just the status quo and thus hard to change a trajectory that has so much momentum.