60 Comments

I am disgusted by your ridiculous comment! By the sounds of it, your employees have to trick you to get time off! Do you own a house?? How many of your employees don’t own their own home, or drive a new car…I bet you do! Quit crying poverty! Treat your employees better and with respect and they will treat you better and be happier at work. This is a forum to support the rights of MOTHERS…not employers to whine about how his employees have to trick him to get time off!! You want loyalty?? Bring your staff bagels on Friday, get to know them and their kids, offer them lunch once in awhile, buy the mothers a gift card to a restaurant for no reason…then go look for your own site!!

[Reply]

My husband currently works in retail and receives no sick days. He is suffering from a kidney stone, the pain of which is considerably more acute when he stands for long periods of time. At work he has to stand or walk all the time. However, he receives no sick days so has the choice of either getting no pay or going to work and suffering. I don’t believe that offering basic workplace protections such as paid time off for illness is going to wreck our economy or make us less competitive. On the contrary, it would contribute to the economic and physical well-being of our workforce, which would increase productivity.

[Reply]

I am fortunate to work for a health care organization that provides more than adequate sick time. However, this has not always been the case. In the past I worked for another health care organization with less sick benefit and we could only use our time for ourselves. If we needed to stay home for sick children we had to use vacation time. More than once, I am ashamed to admit, I gave my daughter Tylenol, crossed my fingers and sent her to school. As a single parent with a lower income, I could not afford to lose a day’s pay. This is the choice that many parents have to make: expose other children to ear infections, strep, etc… or take home a lower paycheck and not be able to meet your monthly expenses.

[Reply]

In the mid-80′s, when I began working, my employers provided both sick leave and vacation leave, but in the early 90′s, my employer made the decision so many did to combine them into a single category, “personal leave.” The argument was that you didn’t need to call in sick to take those days; they became part of your discretionary leave, and you took them if you were sick, but could take them as vacation time or for other personal business if you didn’t need them for health reasons. The amount of leave was equal to the number of days we would have received in both categories, and the argument made sense, and I was young and healthy with no children, so I had no reason to argue; it was as if I had been given two extra weeks of vacation time!

Slowly over the years, the amount of personal leave offered by jobs has become smaller — I now receive about 75% of the leave allocation that I did when they were separate, and believe that I’m very well compensated by my current employer.

As the mother of a young child, I’m constantly stunned by how quickly this personal leave vanishes. If my child is sick twice, needs a regular checkup once, I get sick once for 2 days, I have my regular medical care (checkups, dental cleaning, etc.) and day care is closed for a weather emergency once, not to mention any kind of religious observance not accomodated by a federal holiday, suddenly I’m either required to make up hours (when?), take leave without pay, or I’m simply no longer entitled to any kind of recreational time off during the year. In the three years since my son was born, I have twice had to schedule my vacations as leave without pay, as an accomodation granted to me as a favor by my employer. This same employer, for several years, REQUIRED us to take a week of leave during the Christmas holidays, whether we wanted to or not, leaving me with the equivalent of the sick leave I would have received in the original system.

The pressure to come to work sick, to send my child to day care sick, just in order to make sure that there is SOME opportunity for a discretionary vacation, is tremendous. In a generation that is increasingly responsible for care for their aging parents as well, it’s no wonder that American workers are dissatisfied with their jobs and suffering from stress disorders, leading to increased illness. Combining medical and vacation leave simply opened the door for employers to reduce their contribution to their employees mental and physical health, in the interest of the bottom line. Reasonable accomodations in the form of teleworking arrangements, emergency day care centers, in addition to a realistic level of time off from the job and reasonable flexibility of work hours would go a tremendous way, I believe, toward increased employee loyalty and job satisfaction.

[Reply]

How do I unsubscribe from your email newsletters?

nancyb1210@comcast.net

[Reply]

I’m a employer. Some of my employees take home more than I. Some people call in so the can get weekends off. Lying that they are sick. This is real common. Or a party or what ever. We compete against 22 cents a hour. Trying to survive. You better get in touch with the real world. Most of us make less every year. Your pretty country is gone. Thanks to companies like walmart & sams. Buying 68% of the chinese products. I respect womens rights & Moms. But you people are NUTS!! You have no idea what reality is. Wake up.we don’t live in the American dream any more. Unless maybe you & others were born rich. Some of us small business people work 90 hours a week. Also covering for these so called sick people. Working when we are sick to cover Lying people that rather be shopping than working. Driving a brand new vehicle getting help from the government. Than myself & my good employees pay for their time off. Which country do you live in. It sure isn’t the good old USA. The economy is getting worse daily. We are getting our assed kicked because of politcans filling their pockets with money. The democrats now working with Walmart who has 400,000 lawsuits out there & piling up 1000 a week. Wome dicrimmination,minority, the worst sewing in USA labes in asian clothing 19 years a go. What a crooked country we work in. If that was me instead of a rich company I would be I jail. But you apparently like the politicans don’t care or are rich and don’t have a clue what it’s like out in the real world.

[Reply]

I am working for a company.It is too hard for a worker to go outside for shopping or you feel sick.Working schedule is so busy.At this time,for shopping I prefer online shopping and couponalbum site helps me a lot.

[Reply]

Mother of two young children and soon to have another, wife to her husband who just gotten activated for two years. when the kids or herself been sick she has to call in, now has ran out of benifit time as well as Sick time, her job has sent her to the review board for use of time. Is there anything that can protect her from being fired? Mother looking for answers.

[Reply]

I am not a single mom technically! I am not married but still with the father!!We live together and take care of our son together!Since I am a hairstylist and he is in the union.When our son gets sick I have to call off.He makes more money than I do he calls off we’ll lose the house I call off he helps pay for some of my bills carpayment etc…Well to make a long story short my son got influenza and then an pnamnoia since I had to take time off I got fired!!They said it made me unreliable because if he gets sick again I’m letting my team down!No it wasn’t the first time he got sick but the only time I ever called off was when he had a fever of 102 or higher..This has not been such a healthy year it seems like someone is always sick!My son is 1 in a half years old!Can they do that and will every job be like that??

[Reply]

I am sick today! I have a fish and i love my fish. But i always touch it and then i wash my hands and my mom thinks thats why i am sick! My dad thinks it is from the pool, from being in it too long and thats why i am sick!But i don’t think so! My sister thinks thats it is a smentles a smelly Peincial the flavor is watermelo0n, i am allergic to those things. and the only reson she said that was because she wants it. I think it was the nightmare i had. it was about my fish. oh boy i was sweeting like crazy! i went to my moms and dads room i woke them up my dad went up and down the stairs. He gave me tissus, compress ’cause i had a headache, a garbagecan, water, aspren, and a bed to sleep in. By time that was over it was 6:00 in the morning! and he made fun of my dream he said: ” Kim why did you do that, Kim why did you that” I thought i was in trouble. ” it’s my fish why oh why did you do that you broke my fish in half” Then, i knew what he was doing making fun of my dream! i could understand why because when it was day we had a party and we all went to see a movie Fantatic 4 i didn’t understand it i was too busy thinking about my fish Oh and my fishes name is Cheesedoodle! I got him at the fair. in a game i invited my bested friend Molly! It was sooo fun!

[Reply]

Leave a Comment