Good God, I hate my employer

[Sigmagirl]

@PunditLisa

**Sigmagirl **might work for a company that has a PTO (Paid Time Off) bank. Instead of differentiating between sick, vacation, and holidays, they lump everything together in a “PTO” bank. Doesn’t matter if you use it to go to the doctor, a ballgame, or Christmas. PTO is PTO. Of course, PTO is accrued at a much higher rate because everything is lumped in together. Holidays can be tricky because the impetus falls on the employee to keep enough hours banked so that they’ll get paid following holidays.

That’s about the size of it. I get 15 days of PTO, which sounded good when I hired on (three weeks vacation, not bad), but there are six holidays in a year (New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas) and I have to earn that time off and it gets deducted. So that gives me nine days off, not even two weeks.

If I call off sick, I lose a day of vacation. They keep repeating the emperor’s-new-clothes explanation of how nice it is that it’s all so “flexible” and I can use it for anything I want, but the thing is, they’re penalizing me for being sick (while all the time urging employees to call off sick if they are sick, to avoid transmitting illness). I’ve been at my job four years and have never called off sick, because 1.) I’ve never had anything communicable, just migraines that my boss doesn’t believe exist and 2.) I’m afraid to call off sick. Not only will I lose time, I get disciplinary points lodged against me for calling off without notice.

Next October I will have five years in and get five more days. If I last that long.

[Dangerosa]

@Crown_Prince_of_Irony

Let’s be honest: Europe’s problems have little to do with the fact that they treat their workers with some degree of dignity and respect. Germany is doing pretty well, and they have much better labor laws than the US. Our labor laws are pretty damn draconian if you ask me - noone is legally entitled to time off (aside from situations covered under FMLA), noone is entitled to helthcare, or any other benefits.

Case in point - my wife’s stepmother works for a national arts-crafts retail chain (rhymes with “Schmichael’s”), and they play games with her hours, keeping her just under the “full-time” threshold to prevent having to give her benefits and paid time off, under their corporate policy (edit)of granting benefits to workers with a certain number of hours per year(/edit). And worse, they’ll assign her double-shifts on holidays, but because they pay federal holidays at time + 1/2, they then won’t work her for a week or more to balance out the payroll. Which means that she often actually gets paid less for the holiday period than for a normal period. Some Christmas bonus, huh?

This is a woman who had left the workforce to raise two kids, and was then left by her husband of 25 years, at the age of 55 - this is literally the only job she could get. She has no healthcare, gets no paid time off, and earns about $900 a month. I think it’s a disgrace that she isn’t entitled to paid time off, but what’s even worse is that, under federal law, she isn’t entitled to any time off, paid or unpaid, aside from medical and family emergencies. If she wants to take 2 weeks of her own time off, unpaid, her employer is entirely in their rights to tell her to stuff it, even if she gives advance notice.

But hey, all in the service of the free market, right?

The forces at play really aren’t that simple though. Employee costs are a significant factor for retail operations - and brick and mortar retail operations are under huge pricing pressure from internet retailers who don’t have nearly the labor overhead. If they provide benefits, they need to raise the cost of what they sell - they are already being beaten on price by Amazon and eBay - internet retailers have really low labor costs and often low inventory costs (they often ship direct from the manufacturer), low facility costs. Raise the price enough, and people stop buying at Michaels - eventually, it isn’t worthwhile to keep the store open - and rather than a job that sucks, she has no job at all.

I suppose you could legislate a price minimum on yarn. That typically leads to a bunch of bad consequences.