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"Unions have been pushing companies to improve on-the-job conditions. After lobbying for it last year, major freight railroads have started offering short-term

"Unions have been pushing companies to improve on-the-job conditions. After lobbying for it last year, major freight railroads have started offering short-term paid sick leave—in some cases for the first time—to union workers to ensure ample staffing and service levels." Haha, surreal, wall street journal is now telling me that "unions are the institution by which people (in the richest country in the world) are beginning to secure basic human rights for themselves."

pugio 3y ago
I don't normally engage with these kinds of comments but today I guess I'm extra curious: why is "paid sick leave" a "basic human right."? 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?
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  >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?
  - hiatus 3y ago
    But there are lots of things that are good and moral to offer that aren't human rights.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Yes, societies around the world still have lots of improvements that can be made, and probably can keep improving forever.
      - hiatus 3y ago
        I'm not convinced that moral and good is the criteria by which something is deemed a human right. Especially considering that "moral" means wildly different things in different cultures and "human rights" span the totality of humanity.
        lotsofpulp 3y ago
        How about the other option? >What is the minimum quality of life you want for your children?
  - 0xfaded 3y ago
    I think that's a good question since pointing to references is a powerful way to make an argument. Although not legally binding, the UDHR contains this: "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."
- cykotic 3y ago
  …secure basic human rights for themselves. 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.
- vhlhvjcov 3y ago
  If you don’t get paid when you are sick, you are in essence being punished for being sick. 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.
  - atdrummond 3y ago
    Note that no actual citizens voted on this supposed covenant.
    - somewhereoutth 3y ago
      Appreciate the distinction between representative democracy (a mechanism for choosing/changing the government), and the rule of law (a set of statutes and/or common law laying out how society should function). The covenant was agreed by (mostly) governments chosen through representative democracy, and signed into law (or at least given a nod in various legislation, policy etc). 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.
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
      That’s how representative democracy works. Generally speaking no country has citizens vote on specific foreign policies, with some exceptions.
    - zarzavat 3y ago
      That’s the difference between voting and democracy. Unions are a form of democracy, as it’s the people who are determining their own rights. But yes, unfortunately rights often have to be hard fought for rather than simply voted into existence.
  - 3y ago
- burkaman 3y ago
  See articles 24 and 25: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... 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.
  - usaar333 3y ago
    "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." 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.
    - burkaman 3y ago
      The Declaration of Human Rights is not an abstract philosophical document, it is a practical framework meant to be applied to the world as it is today. It is intentionally prescriptive so that it can influence real-world governments and societies, and it has been somewhat successful in that regard. 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.
      - hiatus 3y ago
        > 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?
- defrost 3y ago
  In Australia discussion about workers rights as universal human rights began at Federation in 1901. 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. Sure, these standards are by no means global rights but they are universal within Australia where the general ethos for a hundred years has been that everybody deserves a fair go .. hopefully that persists. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-employment-standards https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-e... https://business.gov.au/people/employees/employees-pay-leave-and-entitlements# https://business.gov.au/people/employees/employees-pay-leave...
- somethingsaid 3y ago
  I would say that it comes from the basic right to Justice, in where you are penalized baseed on your actions, not on things out of your control. In this case being sick is out of folks control. The business should take into account and be able to handle a given percentage of its employees being sick at a given time. 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.
  - usaar333 3y ago
    What does "control" mean? We have wildly disparite income in society - I don't place blame on people that say can't program computers for not knowing how.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Because rights have functionally become a prestige concept. If you want your position on something to be treated as "holy" or unassailable, you reframe it in the context of a right. You can see this across the political spectrum and on various issues that otherwise have no relation to the traditional political concept of a right.
- nytesky 3y ago
  Forget basic human right. Think basic public health. 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.
rejectfinite 3y ago
USA really is a hellscape. The more I learn about the world, the happier I am, I'm not born there but in Europe.
- batch12 3y ago
  I know that's the popular thing to say nowadays, but it really isn't.
  - brookst 3y ago
    As long as your a straight white male with great health and a wealthy background, it’s lovely.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      Meh. It gets boring. I’m checking all those boxes but I yearn home and find myself spending month in Europe per years as opposed to weeks.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    It kinda depends on circumstances. 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.
    - throwayay583739 3y ago
      That's... True about anywhere and any group of people?
- idlewords 3y ago
  Come on, it's not even a heckscape. Basically a bigger Europe with cooler animals. It's important to have a little chill.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
klooney 3y ago
The WSJ's journalism side isn't its editorial board. They're the same youngish college grads and old lifers as everywhere else.
- TheAtomic 3y ago
  You might want to rethink your perspective on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy...
  - hiatus 3y ago
    > Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession; we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of college students graduate from the super-elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation. Great that one journalist is self-aware but I'm not sure the opinion of a single journalist warrants a change in perspective here.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      It's also David Brooks, Who has exemplified out-of-touch upper-class centrist conservatism for as long as I've known his name. Maybe he's having a moment of redeeming clarity, or maybe he's just being hypocritical.
nerdponx 3y ago
For anyone who doesn't get the joke: The USA once had a strong and popular left wing that arose out of the brutal working conditions of the 19th century industrial revolution, sometimes going as far as open armed conflict against mercenary groups hired by their employers. The pendulum swung strongly the other way over the 20th century, undoing the literal blood sweat and tears that went into securing basic workers' rights. Now we have to do it all over again, and it's funny to see the news reporting on labor organization as if it's some new concept.

pugio 3y ago

I don't normally engage with these kinds of comments but today I guess I'm extra curious: why is "paid sick leave" a "basic human right."? 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?

lotsofpulp 3y ago
>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?
- hiatus 3y ago
  But there are lots of things that are good and moral to offer that aren't human rights.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Yes, societies around the world still have lots of improvements that can be made, and probably can keep improving forever.
    - hiatus 3y ago
      I'm not convinced that moral and good is the criteria by which something is deemed a human right. Especially considering that "moral" means wildly different things in different cultures and "human rights" span the totality of humanity.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        How about the other option? >What is the minimum quality of life you want for your children?
- 0xfaded 3y ago
  I think that's a good question since pointing to references is a powerful way to make an argument. Although not legally binding, the UDHR contains this: "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."
cykotic 3y ago
…secure basic human rights for themselves. 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.
vhlhvjcov 3y ago
If you don’t get paid when you are sick, you are in essence being punished for being sick. 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.
- atdrummond 3y ago
  Note that no actual citizens voted on this supposed covenant.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    Appreciate the distinction between representative democracy (a mechanism for choosing/changing the government), and the rule of law (a set of statutes and/or common law laying out how society should function). The covenant was agreed by (mostly) governments chosen through representative democracy, and signed into law (or at least given a nod in various legislation, policy etc). 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.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    That’s how representative democracy works. Generally speaking no country has citizens vote on specific foreign policies, with some exceptions.
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    That’s the difference between voting and democracy. Unions are a form of democracy, as it’s the people who are determining their own rights. But yes, unfortunately rights often have to be hard fought for rather than simply voted into existence.
- 3y ago
burkaman 3y ago
See articles 24 and 25: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... 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.
- usaar333 3y ago
  "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay." 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.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    The Declaration of Human Rights is not an abstract philosophical document, it is a practical framework meant to be applied to the world as it is today. It is intentionally prescriptive so that it can influence real-world governments and societies, and it has been somewhat successful in that regard. 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.
    - hiatus 3y ago
      > 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?
defrost 3y ago
In Australia discussion about workers rights as universal human rights began at Federation in 1901. 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. Sure, these standards are by no means global rights but they are universal within Australia where the general ethos for a hundred years has been that everybody deserves a fair go .. hopefully that persists. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-employment-standards https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/national-e... https://business.gov.au/people/employees/employees-pay-leave-and-entitlements# https://business.gov.au/people/employees/employees-pay-leave...
somethingsaid 3y ago
I would say that it comes from the basic right to Justice, in where you are penalized baseed on your actions, not on things out of your control. In this case being sick is out of folks control. The business should take into account and be able to handle a given percentage of its employees being sick at a given time. 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.
- usaar333 3y ago
  What does "control" mean? We have wildly disparite income in society - I don't place blame on people that say can't program computers for not knowing how.
keiferski 3y ago
Because rights have functionally become a prestige concept. If you want your position on something to be treated as "holy" or unassailable, you reframe it in the context of a right. You can see this across the political spectrum and on various issues that otherwise have no relation to the traditional political concept of a right.
nytesky 3y ago
Forget basic human right. Think basic public health. 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.

rejectfinite 3y ago

USA really is a hellscape. The more I learn about the world, the happier I am, I'm not born there but in Europe.

batch12 3y ago
I know that's the popular thing to say nowadays, but it really isn't.
- brookst 3y ago
  As long as your a straight white male with great health and a wealthy background, it’s lovely.
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Meh. It gets boring. I’m checking all those boxes but I yearn home and find myself spending month in Europe per years as opposed to weeks.
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  It kinda depends on circumstances. 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.
  - throwayay583739 3y ago
    That's... True about anywhere and any group of people?
idlewords 3y ago
Come on, it's not even a heckscape. Basically a bigger Europe with cooler animals. It's important to have a little chill.
- dopidopHN 3y ago

klooney 3y ago

The WSJ's journalism side isn't its editorial board. They're the same youngish college grads and old lifers as everywhere else.

TheAtomic 3y ago
You might want to rethink your perspective on this. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy-educated.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/trump-meritocracy...
- hiatus 3y ago
  > Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession; we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of college students graduate from the super-elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation. Great that one journalist is self-aware but I'm not sure the opinion of a single journalist warrants a change in perspective here.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    It's also David Brooks, Who has exemplified out-of-touch upper-class centrist conservatism for as long as I've known his name. Maybe he's having a moment of redeeming clarity, or maybe he's just being hypocritical.

nerdponx 3y ago

For anyone who doesn't get the joke: The USA once had a strong and popular left wing that arose out of the brutal working conditions of the 19th century industrial revolution, sometimes going as far as open armed conflict against mercenary groups hired by their employers. The pendulum swung strongly the other way over the 20th century, undoing the literal blood sweat and tears that went into securing basic workers' rights. Now we have to do it all over again, and it's funny to see the news reporting on labor organization as if it's some new concept.