Paid sick days victories

[Panich52]

NPWF

PAID SICK DAYS
Victory in Oregon!

Earlier this month, Oregon state lawmakers secured a major victory for the state's working families, businesses and economy by passing a bill that will guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days. When Governor Kate Brown signs the bill, Oregon will become the fourth state in the nation with a statewide paid sick days law. It's time for Congress to take notice and finally pass the Healthy Families Act.

More:
http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/R?i=mEA8-TsnmnWuRVX3uis4gA


Related:
This just in -- another paid sick days victory! Today, the Montgomery County Council in Maryland approved the nation's 23rd paid sick days law.

More:
http://go.nationalpartnership.org/site/R?i=CmSUiaj3hytpdta497b0PA

[brewens]

1. We lost our paid sick days at my job recently. It's been replaced by what seems to be a pretty

good deal. We now have this long term illness benefit that at least covers us for something major for much longer than we could have with the maximum sick days we could accumulate. The only thing that sucks is that for just a day or two, if you want a full paycheck, you have to use your vacation time. If it's over a week, you have to burn 40 hours of PTO, then the long term benefit kicks in for up to 560 hours I think. I was just off for three weeks with minor knee surgery. I could have milked it for another week, no questions asked if I had wanted to, but I went back. For this year, the new system paid off for me.

I'm one that built up a big stash of PTO and always have plenty to use. I want to cash in at least 300 hours when I leave, the max is 400. I think I have like 325 built up now. I think the old sick leave limit was 360 hours. It seems like it took me about four years to build up to that, only missing a couple of days. We also got a bonus for not missing any days, 24 hours of PTO, 16 hours if you only called in once and 8 hours if you called in twice. I was there seven years before I failed to at least get the one day of bonus PTO.

What was responsible for the change were people that treated sick leave like extra PTO and made sure they used it all. You could count on them calling in at least once a month, always on a Monday or Friday or both in one weekend. I knew a couple guys that worked at our local state liquor store in the early 90's and that was SOP. Even their manager went along with it. It got close to the holidays and they took turns calling in. They were on a annual "use it or loose it" plan. They considered it time off they were entitled to, sick or not. I actually think it was common practice state wide.

Being a guy that never missed much work, I thought that was bullshit. I'm a taxpayer and we gave those people what I considered pretty fair vacation time. I think it was up to five weeks a year off after maybe eight or ten years. They built up to three pretty fast if I remember right. Liquor store is a pretty cake job too.