Also, from the European perspective (and specifically speaking of the technology sector, as that's what I have first-hand experience with), taking sick leave to take care of a child at home isn't a thing, whatsoever. You would just send an email to your team saying that you're sorry but you're working from home because your kid is sick and that would be the end of it.
No compulsion to take vacation.
No compulsion to take sick leave.
No punitive punishments for being human and for your family members being human.
It really is a different world, over here. However, given the American exceptionalism showing up in the thread, I'm going to wager that this probably going to see some vitriolic response.
> However, given the American exceptionalism showing up in the thread, I'm going to wager that this probably going to see some vitriolic response.
I actually don't believe in American exceptionalism at all. Nor European exceptionalism. But I am fed up with people from the most developed part of the world acting shocked and morally outraged when life isn't as amazing everywhere else.
You probably didn't intend it that way, but it comes off as extremely smug.
OECD reports median household disposable income as $31,100 in France and as $30,600 in the U.S. [1]
That's far more relevant than per capita GDP, if you're looking at the typical experience for the typical person.
“In the United States, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 44 049 a year”
In addition the website says average, and doesn’t describe whether it means a mean or a median.
See also https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/budget-a...
Yes, from personal experience France at least is more developed than the US.
Anyway, you still have a right to get Kinderkrankengeld for 10 days per year, paid by the national health insurance. Enjoy!
Seeing this new (to me) word gave me a little meta-joy this morning. Not for the topic at hand, but for the wonderful German word compounding.
Not quite as musical as my favorite three-part compound to date. The Thai word pronounced "malang-tao-tong" is roughly insect-turtle-gold and describes what we would call a ladybug in the US.
Who pays for this will depend on your employer. Many of them pay for a few days per year. If you need more days or if they don't pay, you can get "Kinderkrankengeld²" from your national health insurance (another 10 days per year).
---
When you're more like the rest of the workforce, you show up where you're expected to man the cash register, nurse your patients, drive your truck, clean up the office, etc.
I worked at Starbucks for 5 years. When I got sick, I showed up to work. I know I worked while having the flu, and making drinks for people. If we didn't show up, our hours for next week would be messed up badly and intentionally. We would go from 35 hours to 15 hours, or we'd be scheduled "clopens" - close at midnight, and open at 4:45a the next morning. If you wanted your job, you showed up and vomited on the floor.
I also worked at wal-mart. I was a 3rd shift stocker. I was fired for getting injured on the job by a faulty pallet jack falling on my foot, and "costing the company money" (exact quote). I even have my discharge paper stating that. Needed x-rays and a tetanus shot. And with someone at the time who had little money, lawsuits are out of the question, especially for a corp like Walmart.
I'll take some of that 'commie socialistic European perspective', if you don't mind :)
One attorney I talked with didn't do cases on contingency. Another refused because it was against Walmart.
And that was that. Sure, I was wronged. Not a damned thing I can do about it.
I personally know of two separate acquaintances’ relatives who were hurt at Walmart, fired, sued with no up front legal fees, and won. One got hit by a parking lot shopping cart train and the other got injured in the mechanic shop.
I wasn't rolling in dough prior to it, and had even less afterward. The thought that I'd be able to shop around with lawyers and schedule a consultation, and all that while I'm scrambling for looking for another job... Well, it speaks to many people here that do have buffers in their income and savings. I, and all whom I worked with at the time had no buffers.
Maybe I'd have won. Or not. But what I do know is the lawyers who did want to hear my case both said no. Others, I left the details with the secretary. Nothing.
But manual labour is dangerous and unfair. It’s worse in Ag field and even children and families who live near large farming communities are affected by drift and the spraying and watershed poisoning and general environmental degradation. This is why we must automate and get machines to do the dangerous jobs.
Yes, that will be a post labour world but that’s easier to figure out. It’s better to give dignity to people than make human beings work for other human beings. I abhor the very notion.
I've lived involuntarily homeless for a time. I've been on food stamps. I've been injured and fired on a job. I've had dozens of crummy bad jobs; no benefits, don't care if youre sick, dangerous. You're a "piece" of work, and treated as such. You're a less-than-nothing, because you are who you are.
And then there's IT work. I've finally been able to claw up in the IT world as a systems admin. And the treatment I 'suffer' (laugh) are things like good insurance, PTO, actual honest to goodness sick days - and I'm actually believed, free coffee/espresso/lacrois, snack plates during lunch. And we have at least 2 catered lunches a month. Recently, my employer also sent me to DerbyCon. $1200 right there. Covered.
IT is radically different compared to what most employees go through. We are treated with respect and dignity, and compensated fairly with our salary and perks. Those who serve us when we go into bookstores, supermarkets, restaurants, and more are kept at the basic maintenance level of living - and that is if everything goes right. It usually doesn't. Cars break down; bodies break down; emergencies occur; accidental pregnancies happen; life happens.
Yes, I am a socialist, and also see automation as a solution. And also, unlike the propaganda, there's enough resources that we all can live decently compensated and respected lives. We're not quite there with 100% automation, and still need human labor for a bit... But there's no reason (other than greed) for barely-but-not-quite maintenance wages.
The alternative to crappy business practices isn't people starving in the streets because of lack of jobs. The alternative is that the people with excess resources distribute some of those resources to others that would otherwise starve.
There are many nations out there with working systems that don't accept that sort of abuse of it's workers - why do people insist on choosing ideologies that are so obviously not in the interests of the majority of the people?
Because policies that depend on taking from the economically productive to prop up the unproductive eventually become unsustainable.
Does it upset you that people work jobs instead of voting to receive a million USD annual stipend? Would you vote for a policy giving that to every person?
Back to the Walmart story. There is more we aren’t being told. There are thousands of lawyers drooling to take a case against a company the size of Walmart firing people for simply getting hurt due to the company’s incompetence. OP more than likely was at fault for the accident, which would be grounds for termination in most European countries as well.
1) There are many very stable nations that have had long-term policies of treating their disadvantaged much better than you seem to be proposing, so this point is demonstratively false. Why do you believe it's true?
2) There are many people in every country that aren't economically productive - the elderly, the very young, the chronically ill, etc. Most countries manage to afford to take care of these people in some manner without collapse. It's possible because technology has driven our average productivity extremely high in historical terms, and there are more than enough resources available to take care of them. Doing so doesn't cause those societies to collapse. I'd suggest it makes them more stable when fewer people are desperately poor.
I'm not saying you're arguing that those example groups of people don't deserve assistance. But you do seem to be saying that _some_ economically unproductive people shouldn't be helped to survive. What is special about the second group of people? Why does helping them somehow lead to an unsustainable society when supporting other groups doesn't?
Also, I would rather keep my money and not redistribute it to the bottomfeeders.
That's such an horrible, ugly, selfish way of thinking. How can you sleep at night?
This is a severe misstatement of that person’s argument. Believing that there is no better alternative isn’t the same as believing something is good.
I'm honestly trying to understand why people would suggest that its ok to accept that tradeoff. I get why in any individual case someone might choose to make that decision - they may truly have no other options available to them, and the alternatives are much worse (real hunger, homelessness). I just don't understand why people seem to promote that situation as a political position - that somehow as a society that's the best we can do, or it's the best policy to allow it.
Paid sick leave with a urgent care clinic available at no charge. Someone gets sick (esp with food service) and they work for you, they should provide that clinic at no charge, and you get a legit sick day.
The stick: the health dept should be able to come in and close that food service thing down right then and there if someone is obviously sick. And because it was negligence of the company, the company is still legally obligated to pay the wages of everyone they screwed over. Tipped staff will go by average weekly reported wages.
.... But that's wishful thinking. The NRA - National Restaurant Association pays more and is better connected than public health and respectful treatment. I mean, who really cares if a few sick workers spread influenza as hotspots in food service, and infect many more, and likely kill a few with compromised immune systems? /sarcastic
I often wonder if we could magically make every person on the planet avoid human contact for 1 month if we'd kill off the common cold. I know it's impossible obviously it's just an interesting thought experiment.
Someone will step up to make the money and be more human about the whole thing.
I work for a European multinational, and it is most certaintly a thing.
How about European low-income people? Low-income people work mostly in retail, transports and logistics, cleaning, construction, and physical jobs. They can't work from home.
In Germany every employee is entitled to leave of absence if their child is ill - up to a maximum of ten working days per child in the calendar year. Many children are sick more than that.
A doctor’s note from the first day is required. Employees typically receive their full income the first few days taken off, but it varies.
A waitress, housekeeper, janitor, or someone else who actually has to be at a specific place to perform their work, doesn't have that kind of flexibility.
Even in IT, if the company doesn't support any remote working (and there are many company that still don't), you'd have no choice but to use a day off.
It’s pretty common in the US as well.
I work in IT as a sysad. If it wasn't for the company I work for requiring in-person work, my job could be 100% remote.
But quite a while back, I worked low paying no benefit jobs to make ends meet. And it's pretty hard to make coffees or stock shelves 'remotely'.
The harder the labor, the worse the pay, and the worse your health will be, and the less benefits you'll get. Unions were the antidote to that, but...
edit: kids up to the age of 12.
edit2: it can be unpaid. However you get sickpay instead.
With flexible hours the average working hours per day are calculated. So if you work for 40 hours a month, a sick day gets you around 2 hours of sick leave.
edit: I think I got you now, you mean day labor, who get payed for how long they can work for changing employers?
I had to google for that, those are "Unständig Beschäftigte". Those are people who are employed for less then a week. They dont get sick leave. I couldnt tell you an example where it is allowed to hire someone like that. Even field workers/harvest helper get a normal contract with predefined working hours.
In other words, you're out of touch with ordinary, less privileged workers.
> It really is a different world, over here. The antithesis to the apathetical, if I may be so bold...
Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well. Plus, you can earn far more and you pay less in taxes.
What about the ones that are not developers?
Just because I'm "out of touch" with ordinary, less privileged workers doesn't equate to my experience and observations in the sector as being invalidated, yeah? Isn't the site "Hacker News" and not "ordinary, less privileged workers'" news?
>Oh, come on. If you're a developer you can have a "work from home" day in the US as well.
That might be true for you but is it true for developers in the overall society?
Let's take this to an extreme example: A coworker missed over two months, last year, for 'x' medical reasons. What would've surely driven him to the poor house in the states was paid through those taxes you later commented on and there was no threat to his job because of it.
>Plus, you can earn far more and you pay less in taxes.
What does that have to do with anything related to kids and the propensity to send them to school because you haven't the time to take off to take care of them or the funds to have a minder? Surely, those less taxes (and more pay) should equate to more days from school, yeah, if it really is as exceptional as you're trying to make it sound.
Personally, I like paying taxes for a better society (e.g.: education, health, infrastructure, etc.) but that's just me. However, that has nothing to do the topic.
Disability insurance is a standard employment benefit in the US for white collar jobs and they would be protected from dismissal by the FMLA.
Less privileged workers undoubtedly have it better in Europe than they do in the US, but it's completely dishonest to compare a developer in Europe to a cashier in the US. Even in Europe, cashiers and construction workers cannot work from home. Even in the US many people do work from home sometimes.
It means your experience doesn't scale to broader society, but you were making a point about broader society. If the ordinary secretary or the shift worker or the policeman don't get their "work from home days" there's essentially no difference in your example to what's going on in the US.
> That might be true for you but is it true for developers in the overall society?
Working from home on occasion certainly isn't unusual.
> Let's take this to an extreme example: A coworker missed over two months, last year, for 'x' medical reasons. What would've surely driven him to the poor house in the states was paid through those taxes you later commented on and there was no threat to his job because of it.
"Surely" you have no idea about the US system. Paid sick days is something your insurance may or may not cover. You get the choice of whether you want to pay for that or not. States laws also may protect workers from getting fired during longer illness.
> What does that have to do with anything related to kids...
Nothing, just rubbing it in. If you're successful in Finland (or some other little Euro country), you're going to be far less wealthy than in the US. You'll be paying for everyone else to live. If that makes you happy, go for it. Pat yourself on the back.
Tell that to the employer that fired me for doing this lol.
Occassion and modus operandi are two entirely different precepts but you know this, yeah, and your trying ever-so hard to be pedantic. It's cute.
>Paid sick days is something your insurance may or may not cover.
I thought it was the employer who paid the sick days in the states. What you're talking about falls under the FMLA, I believe; which is an entire different set of principles - independent of the actual employer, yeah? Then you reinforce the point that it's not an overall societal protection with the statement, "States laws also may protect workers from getting fired during longer illness."
>Nothing, just rubbing it in.
You've brought nothing of attainable consequence to the conversation, much less any evidence of your assertion. How can you rub in that which you assume to be true but have no evidence for or against? The arrogance is astounding, to say the least.
>If you're successful in Finland (or some other little Euro country), you're going to be far less wealthy than in the US.
I'm assuming you're speaking of purely fiscal wealth, which is a pretty myopic perspective to have. You've provided no evidence of this claim. Are you sure we, the europoor, are actually poor or is this just something you're reverberating from the echo chambers of American exceptionalism.
>You'll be paying for everyone else to live.
Do you not do this with the current Social Security system? The irony is palpable...
>If that makes you happy, go for it.
Already doing it, so this is pretty pedestrian.
>Pat yourself on the back.
Is this not what you're trying to do with your own argument around more pay and less taxes? Pot meet kettle. The banality of this tangible irony is already starting to bore me.
Do you have anything of consequence to proffer or is it going to continually be this mundane level of effort, deriving from your bravado? If the latter of the two, then, you're bringing a knife to a gun show and it wouldn't be fair to keep being you with your own phantom limbs, so I'm dipping out. Have fun!
I’m not sure why you are getting so defensive when it is you who understands so little about the US that you just described a typical US tech job and tried to pretend it was something special about Europe.
Developers in the US make significantly more on average than developers anywhere in Europe. Developers working at the big tech companies do even better than that by clearing north of $300k annually between stock, cash, and bonuses. These jobs allow working from home, provide healthcare, PTO, significant maternity/paternity leave, etc. A few minutes of googling these numbers might help you gain some perspective.
The US is easily the best place to be when you have in-demand skills. Every country is going to trail pretty far behind on what it’s employment ecosystem can offer a developer (as of right now). This is why your post sounds so ignorant to people familiar with the perks of being a developer in the US.
Where the US is absolutely terrible compared to Europe is the social safety nets that people in worse jobs depend on. Yet that’s not what you decided to use as your point of comparison. You instead tried to show off the perks of tech skills there, which are worse than many HN readers receive in the US.
It is you who is being pedantic. My point is that working from home, as a developer, because of some special case is generally possible, just like in your case.
Now what about all the other professions in your country? Do they all get their little "stay at home" days? No? Then what's your point?
> How can you rub in that which you assume to be true but have no evidence for or against? The arrogance is astounding, to say the least.
Why, I thought it was common knowledge.
Finland, as compared to the US:
Higher cost of living with less disposable income:
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Finland/Un...
Developer salaries half as high:
https://www.daxx.com/blog/development-trends/it-salaries-sof...
Unemployment rate 50% higher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemploym...
And obviously, the weather in Northern Europe sucks. Priceless!
> I'm assuming you're speaking of purely fiscal wealth, which is a pretty myopic perspective to have.
No, I'm talking about the standard of living. Of course somebody with a lower standard of living will have to find some other reason to make themselves look superior.
> Do you not do this with the current Social Security system?
You can look up the difference yourself.
> The irony is palpable... Do you have anything of consequence to proffer or is it going to continually be this mundane level of effort, deriving from your bravado? If the latter of the two, then, you're bringing a knife to a gun show and it wouldn't be fair to keep being you with your own phantom limbs, so I'm dipping out.
I don't know about your native language, but if you write like this in English, it makes you sound like a clown.
The actual truth: a paper from the CDC finding an apparently quite weak link between poverty and rate of school absence due to sickness stuck that in as one of many somewhat plausible explanations, in a very speculative discussion section.
To emphasize: the headline of this story is not one of the factual scientific claims of the paper.