I don't disagree that it's a good and moral thing to offer, I'm just curious about where these universally agreed upon "basic human rights" come from?

From here:

>it's a good and moral thing to offer,

What is the minimum quality of life you want for your children?

>What is the minimum quality of life you want for your children?

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

This isn’t a claim that everyone agrees this is literally a basic human right. It’s a colloquialism to emphasize the author’s view that this is something that should have been granted to the workers long ago and that it is appalling that it wasn’t.

Please don’t get hung up on semantics. Use a different phrasing if it pleases you to do so.

Not being punished for being sick is a basic human right.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force in 1976. The human rights that the Covenant seeks to promote and protect include:

the right to work in just and favourable conditions;

the right to social protection, to an adequate standard of living and to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental well-being;

the right to education and the enjoyment of benefits of cultural freedom and scientific progress.

On counter side, you'll be punished for not being sick.

It’s funny how I absolutely never thought about it that way. I guess scarcity of free time change perspective.

Note that was never ratified by the United States

Ideas like 'the will of the people' overriding established good and just law is the preserve of populists, and in extreme, of fascists. The Brexit referendum being a good case in point.

Threatening a person's livelihood if they want to take a couple days off to go to the doctor is denying them "a standard of living adequate for [their] health and well-being". Additionally, if you force your workers to come to work sick, you also threaten everyone else's standard of healthy living by unnecessarily exposing them to a contagious disease.

The with pay term feels oddly specific and overly prescriptive. (If your society had UBI is this implying the employer still must pay you for holidays?)

I'd feel the minimum requirement to not threaten livelihood when a potentially coercive relationship exists is unpaid leave should be allowed (things like the FMLA). Though even that seems nuanced with contracting/business owners.

It is not intended to be applicable to any society imaginable, that would be impossibly broad.

On a practical note, I disagree with you that reducing someone's income if they need to stay home to stay healthy is non-coercive, in the world as it exists today.

If you are party to an agreement wherein you exchange labor for capital, how is it non-coercive to force someone to pay you for not holding up your end of the bargain?

Shorter answer: an agreement itself cannot be coercive if you voluntarily agreed to it, but you can be coerced into making that agreement. That's often the situation in America today.

An early Harvester Agreement ( ~ 1901 ?? ) set the minimum wage as a livable wage - to cover food, clothing, rent for a family unit with 40 hours of work.

Sick leave was introduced into industrial awards in 1922. From 1935 to the 1970s, paid sick leave was gradually introduced into federal awards until 10 days sick leave per year became standard.

Current workers rights are laid out in the National Employment Standards made Federal law by the Fair Work Act (2009)

    The yearly entitlement of paid sick or carer’s leave is based on an employee’s ordinary hours of work. It is 10 days for full-time employees, and pro-rata for part-time employees. This can be calculated as 1/26 of an employee’s ordinary hours of work in a year.

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-e...

https://business.gov.au/people/employees/employees-pay-leave...

As for the right to Justice, we have these rights to allow us to live together as independent sovereign entities. A society that does not acknowledge basic rights of individuals is one where those with more power or resources will dominate those with fewer. There may not be some intrinsic physical law that requires that we have these rights, but I for one would not want to live or participate in society that does not espouse them and strive to adhere to them.

We have wildly disparite income in society - I don't place blame on people that say can't program computers for not knowing how.

If we incentive workers to come to work when sick, they are more likely to spread illness, worsen their conditions where they need more expensive care (which we will provide in most cases one way or another — letting sick people die in the streets leads to revolution and John Q Public type hostage taking), and of course can disrupt unemployment which has many wripple effects for something out of workers control.

All of society benefits from paid sick leave, not just the human rights of workers.

Take your same thoughts but think about how you can say it in a way that reaches your intended target group. Communication is never easy.

If you’re mainstream attractive, healthy, and above median income, the US is pretty nice. If any of those things are missing, it pretty much sucks.

Great that one journalist is self-aware but I'm not sure the opinion of a single journalist warrants a change in perspective here.