[TheRealDunkirk]

Exactly, on all points. For instance, I got hammered by COVID, and was almost useless for about 4 weeks. My boss was only concerned that I get better, and wasn't concerned that I go on some sort of short-term disability or FLMA. The person who wrote that article would have simply not paid me for that month, and not guaranteed work after I got better, which would have made the situation much more stressful, removed income at a time I needed it most to cover medical expenses, and added insult to injury. My company is very "woke," and I know a lot of people have problems with such things, but one very welcome outcome of this is that they really do put people first, and the bottom line second. In a pure gig economy, there's no chance of having a "human" relationship with your employer like this.

[Mezzie]

> For instance, I got hammered by COVID, and was almost useless for about 4 weeks. My boss was only concerned that I get better, and wasn't concerned that I go on some sort of short-term disability or FLMA. The person who wrote that article would have simply not paid me for that month, and not guaranteed work after I got better, which would have made the situation much more stressful, removed income at a time I needed it most to cover medical expenses, and added insult to injury.

Yup, and now add on family or other responsibilities. It's also a way to keep hiring 22-year olds right out of school who won't stand up for themselves and don't have the experience to ask to be treated better. Likewise, a great way to keep anyone with a family out of the workforce/desperate.

> My company is very "woke," and I know a lot of people have problems with such things, but one very welcome outcome of this is that they really do put people first, and the bottom line second.

Be careful with this; it can go either way: Either they're great OR the wokeness is a great cover for complete exploitation. One good way to figure out is to ask how they address disability; it's the one identity that can impact somebody's ability to produce, and it will tell you if they see their workers as people or if they're more interested in diversity check-boxes for the sake of funding/PR.

[jpm_sd]

I can imagine a rather dark "Employees as a Service" future where we get paid only for each productive minute of automatically recorded work, as if humans were AWS Lambda instances or whatever

[sobkas]

> I can imagine a rather dark "Employees as a Service" future where we get paid only for each productive minute of automatically recorded work, as if humans were AWS Lambda instances or whatever

And then people would be forced to pee into the bottles, poop into their work assigned bags, or wear diapers to continue working without breaks. What a horrible future it would be.

[betwixthewires]

If you think about paid leave schemes like sick leave, vacation time, parental leave and the like, they're actually counter to ensuring people can afford time off. What's going on amounts to a company managed savings trust. What companies should be doing is making sure to pay people enough money when they are working to where they can afford to put some back for those times when they can't work (and won't get paid). This then puts the onus on the person to manage their finances adequately, and enables them to have more flexibility about when and why they take time off.

Instead we have a situation where people basically cannot be trusted to save for times when they can't work and that compensation is held in trust by the company, which then enables the company to manipulate with it and hold it over people's heads. People feel stuck at their job for this compensation just like with healthcare, to reference a point you made elsewhere in the thread, why not decouple them both?

IMO if we are going to have these paid time off schemes, they should be negotiable (in the banking sense) by law so that people who want to receive the compensation as money rather than time off can do so. Some companies do this, others do not, but these are part of our compensation, we should still receive it if we don't use it, like we otherwise would if we were just working for money.

[sklargh]

The majority of people cannot be trusted to save for hard times, much less vacation. White collar freelancers with market power are not a model that is generally applicable to the broader white or blue collar population.

This also reeks of “unlimited PTO” which effectively results in individuals taking less vacation and other comparable benefits.

Can you let me know how someone should save for time off to recover from an unplanned pregnancy at the beginning of their career?

[danaris]

> The majority of people cannot be trusted to save for hard times,

The majority of people do not make enough money to save for hard times.

People, no matter how poor they are, both need and deserve luxuries in their life, however small.

Pay people enough, and—surprise!—suddenly they can totally save for hard times.

[TheRealDunkirk]

No one is stopping companies from offering these kinds of arrangements. Just let us know when a company starts offering programming gigs, with no benefits, for +75-100% salary premiums over full-time employment for the same job, and allow us to choose which option we want. I'll wait.

[betwixthewires]

If nobody were offering these types of arrangements there wouldn't be freelancers choosing to work in these types of arrangements. These arrangements do exist, they're not the norm but are becoming more popular, and I find it interesting that you argue against them then claim they don't exist. You didn't have to wait very long looks like, I can be snarky too if that's what you'd prefer.

Decoupling healthcare is just the first step, decoupling everything except monetary compensation is ultimately what frees people to work on what they want to work on.