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At this point in the conversation I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want

At this point in the conversation I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit?

ghaff 6y ago
The argument for a shared pool from the employee side is "I don't get sick much and, as a shared pool, I almost certainly get more vacation time off than if I had a sick pool and a vacation pool." However, historically, when the two were commonly separate, the sick time would often actually be a very significant chunk (maybe a month) with the understanding that actually burning through most or all of your sick time would be a rare event because of an operation or whatever. Just to throw out rough numbers, you might have 4 weeks of a combined PTO pool today. 20 years ago you might have had 3 weeks of vacation time and 4 weeks of sick time.
cr1895 6y ago
>Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit? Another thing that is important to point out is that leave days are sometimes an earned entitlement ultimately paid out to you if not taken, whereas sick leave isn't.
- ghaff 6y ago
  That's a good point. It may also be worth pointing out that's the case with "unlimited" vacation as well. Even if you're not cynical about whether employees will be able to take a reasonable amount in practice, it's certainly the case that nothing needs to be paid out when you leave. Which for someone moving around jobs a fair bit can add up over time.
  - cr1895 6y ago
    From what I understand-and perhaps it varies by state-it's just left to the benevolence of your employer whether your accrued vacation days are actually paid out to you or if they just disappear in the US if you for example leave a company or don't use all of them within a certain time. It's kind of insane to me that they can just be taken away like that.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      It may vary by state but it's always been paid out to me as far as I can remember based on three different states. (This type of thing does tend to be state-based law and does seem to be [1].) "Use it or lose it" also is prohibited in a few states although (I'm assuming) all of the others do allow accumulation caps. [1] http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacation-rolling-pl#:~:text=No%20federal%20or%20state%20law,comply%20with%20applicable%20state%20law http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacatio....
baobabKoodaa 6y ago
> I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit? If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an employee would prefer to have more days off. However, all else would not be equal. The PTO days are a cost to the employer, which means the employer can afford to shell out less in other forms of compensation. Think of the job market as a market where employers compete for employees (and vice versa, but that's tangential to the point here). Employers offer different forms of compensation to employees: salary, bonuses, paid vacation days, etc. If the government suddenly mandated that employers must give all employees more vacation days, then the employers could afford to pay out less in other forms of compensation. Sure, in the short run the employer would pay out more to employees and be less profitable, but over time they would balance out this cost by paying less in other benefits. In other words, if you take the perspective of an employee with a 5+ year time horizon, the total amount of compensation received from the employer would not be expected to increase as a result of those government-mandated extra vacation days. What would change, however, is the incentive of people to go to work sick and infect others. If sick days cost you money, then you are incentivized to go to work sick. As a result, more people get sick. That would be bad. So from a risk/reward pespective, we have a reward of ~0, and a risk of more sickness.
- mikem170 6y ago
  Point taken, I understand what you're saying and that plays into the mix. My next thought is that having the separate sick days with the expectation that people will only use them when needed introduces several less-than-optimal problems: 1) some employees will lie about being sick, 2) some employers won't trust their employees, interjecting the need for unnecessary dacotr's notes, etc and 3) some employees who follow the rules will resent those who don't. Everyone getting the same combined amount of day mitigates the above, with the understanding that might be 45 PTO days instead of 30 vacation + 30 sick. This would seem to leave the problem of people who are genuinely sick for longer 15 days, under the 30+30 they'd not be dipping into their vacation days as quickly. There will always be some number of people who run out of sick days, no matter how many you have. Maybe the policies around short-term disability should be adjusted, and the more drastic situations handled with that (requiring doctor visits, etc). I'm currently reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, something that rings a lot of bells for me. I'll admit to having an very questioning attitude about workplace culture lately :-)

ghaff 6y ago

The argument for a shared pool from the employee side is "I don't get sick much and, as a shared pool, I almost certainly get more vacation time off than if I had a sick pool and a vacation pool." However, historically, when the two were commonly separate, the sick time would often actually be a very significant chunk (maybe a month) with the understanding that actually burning through most or all of your sick time would be a rare event because of an operation or whatever. Just to throw out rough numbers, you might have 4 weeks of a combined PTO pool today. 20 years ago you might have had 3 weeks of vacation time and 4 weeks of sick time.

cr1895 6y ago

>Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit? Another thing that is important to point out is that leave days are sometimes an earned entitlement ultimately paid out to you if not taken, whereas sick leave isn't.

ghaff 6y ago
That's a good point. It may also be worth pointing out that's the case with "unlimited" vacation as well. Even if you're not cynical about whether employees will be able to take a reasonable amount in practice, it's certainly the case that nothing needs to be paid out when you leave. Which for someone moving around jobs a fair bit can add up over time.
- cr1895 6y ago
  From what I understand-and perhaps it varies by state-it's just left to the benevolence of your employer whether your accrued vacation days are actually paid out to you or if they just disappear in the US if you for example leave a company or don't use all of them within a certain time. It's kind of insane to me that they can just be taken away like that.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    It may vary by state but it's always been paid out to me as far as I can remember based on three different states. (This type of thing does tend to be state-based law and does seem to be [1].) "Use it or lose it" also is prohibited in a few states although (I'm assuming) all of the others do allow accumulation caps. [1] http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacation-rolling-pl#:~:text=No%20federal%20or%20state%20law,comply%20with%20applicable%20state%20law http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacatio....

baobabKoodaa 6y ago

> I don't understand why any employee would want them to be separate. Doesn't that just work to the company's benefit? They want you to be there as many days as possible Why wouldn't you want all the sick+personal days to use as you see fit? If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an employee would prefer to have more days off. However, all else would not be equal. The PTO days are a cost to the employer, which means the employer can afford to shell out less in other forms of compensation. Think of the job market as a market where employers compete for employees (and vice versa, but that's tangential to the point here). Employers offer different forms of compensation to employees: salary, bonuses, paid vacation days, etc. If the government suddenly mandated that employers must give all employees more vacation days, then the employers could afford to pay out less in other forms of compensation. Sure, in the short run the employer would pay out more to employees and be less profitable, but over time they would balance out this cost by paying less in other benefits. In other words, if you take the perspective of an employee with a 5+ year time horizon, the total amount of compensation received from the employer would not be expected to increase as a result of those government-mandated extra vacation days. What would change, however, is the incentive of people to go to work sick and infect others. If sick days cost you money, then you are incentivized to go to work sick. As a result, more people get sick. That would be bad. So from a risk/reward pespective, we have a reward of ~0, and a risk of more sickness.

mikem170 6y ago
Point taken, I understand what you're saying and that plays into the mix. My next thought is that having the separate sick days with the expectation that people will only use them when needed introduces several less-than-optimal problems: 1) some employees will lie about being sick, 2) some employers won't trust their employees, interjecting the need for unnecessary dacotr's notes, etc and 3) some employees who follow the rules will resent those who don't. Everyone getting the same combined amount of day mitigates the above, with the understanding that might be 45 PTO days instead of 30 vacation + 30 sick. This would seem to leave the problem of people who are genuinely sick for longer 15 days, under the 30+30 they'd not be dipping into their vacation days as quickly. There will always be some number of people who run out of sick days, no matter how many you have. Maybe the policies around short-term disability should be adjusted, and the more drastic situations handled with that (requiring doctor visits, etc). I'm currently reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, something that rings a lot of bells for me. I'll admit to having an very questioning attitude about workplace culture lately :-)