Like Ford, many restaurant workers don't get paid sick leave

    As a single father with three daughters, Ford never took sick days because frankly, he couldn't afford to.

    Ford's job — like more than half of restaurant and accommodation jobs as of 2020 — does not offer paid sick leave, meaning workers typically do not get paid for missing work due to illness unless they dip into their paid vacation time.

You should just be able to call in sick when really sick and for as long as needed. Verified by a doctor of course.

The money doesn't come from the government, it comes from the taxpayers. The governments are supposed to do what they promised to do with our money via their election peogrammes.

(In an ideal world that is...)

However that means that cost of the sick leave is spread over the whole society and not a single company, or single manager’s budget, making it easier to accept for business owners.

That’s why Europeans typically do not have to worry about being paid for sick leave, unlike Americans.

My colleagues in the US are often like "I won't call in sick because I have no sick days left". That's dangerous en counterproductive.

Where the money comes from is a secondary issue.

Once the magic number 3 was reached, the employer would ask that a doctor issues a "not fit for work for X days" to avoid abuse of this facilitation.

Additionally workers are guaranteed £109.40 ($139.33) a week in statutory sick pay (paid by the employer) for up to 28 weeks of time off for illness.

For contrast, the median weekly full-time income is £640 ($815) so it's potentially a big drop in pay for being off work sick - we have one of the lowest rates in developed nations - but it's better than getting nothing.

The way this works is generally quite flexible. Do you do this every other week then yes the first day you will be sent for a cert. If it's once a year they won't bother.

Just to make sure that you know who to be angry at.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine

> Every "heartwarming" human interest story in the United States is like "he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine" and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used.

src: https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1309325764739858432

Orphans lower home values, so city governments buy Orphan Crushing Machines to keep the neighborhood “nice.”

I think that support massively goes down when the likes of fox news runs FUD headline about how people in the UK are dying due to long waiting times, coming to the conclusion that single payer systems are BAD, private-only healthcare is GOOD.

People can easily be manipulated by mass UFD to vote against their own best interests.

Those three regions alone make up the majority of the "rest of the world", and I'm pretty sure an unskilled laborer from any of them would be delighted to come to the United States and work at Burger King.

Even relatively desirable countries (e.g., Canada) have a gross imbalance, on a per capita basis, between people emigrating to the United States and and people emigrating from the United States to their country. The imbalance would be much worse if the United States didn't have restrictions on immigration.

People vote with their feet, mang.

The rest of the world was raised on the Hollywood portrayal of a rich country of bounty

This way it's just a small thing to recognize someone who (hopefully) didn't get sick in any of the days thay had to work

Also, not getting sick is not a personal achievement that's up to you, unless you live like Bubble Boy[1], it can happen to anyone even if you're usually healthy as a horse and take care of yourself. Accidents can happen if you leave the house and viruses spread around if you socialize a lot.

It also fosters a culture where you get looked down if you have more sick days than others, as if it's a competition, even in places where sick leave is legal.

I've lost track of how many times I got sick from someone form the office who came in coughing and sneezing, even though we live in Europe where you can take sick leave without any repercussions, but NO, they felt that their work for the company was more important than their health or the health of their colleagues and didn't want to be looked down as a weakling who takes sick leave every time they get the sniffles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_Boy_(film)

However, it's also pretty common for people to come to work sick, as these are jobs that don't pay you on the days you don't work, regardless of the reason. If you have a choice between taking a Sudafed and powering through, or not paying your rent that month, which are you going to choose?

The difference between how people are treated in the food service industry and tech is so stuck. I worked in the former for a decade and it eroded my self-worth. Nobody in tech would stay in a place that treated employees 1/10 as badly, not for a day.

Also, multi-player video games are occupying kids free time, and don't require the folding money that previous hobbies like cars did.

In some cases it probably comes down to paying rent but in others probably just the owners want to squeeze out more cash by never letting the property not make money

But even ignoring the owner, not opening means that everybody else who works in the restaurant also doesn't get paid. If prep for the shift has started before the person called out, what do you do with perishable product?

On top of that, closing for a night means unexpectedly having to cancel reservations which comes with a reputation hit. Sorry to cancel your anniversary plans with 45 minutes notice!

Won't someone please think of the owners' profits? /s

Imagine police giving reward for not reporting crimes or HR giving rewards for not reporting sexual harassments.

they are already forced to not call in sick by the fact they don't get paid sick leave

i can't believe you're sincerely making this argument i'm actually disturbed you exist. i hope you are trolling

Perhaps the circumstances were such that this would be one of the very specific gigs (working hours, convenient shifts, distance from home, etc.)

But still it also baffled me why he was in the same job, restaurant, company for 20 years in today's world.

That's a great text only version of a major news site, really liking it.

The internet is too cluttered.

Even if his employer or other CEOs saw the crowdfunding (what are the odds they even browse those kinds of sites?), surely this would just reinforce their belief that it's okay to underpay and undervalue their employees because someone else will just pick up the tab?

BTW, The point of crowdfunding campaigns is not to change the hearts and minds of CEOs. The goal is to remind the public how unappreciated their hard work and service actually is to the executives.