Workers in California will soon receive a minimum of five days of paid sick leave annually, instead of three, under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Wednesday.
The law, which takes effect in January, also increases the amount of sick leave workers can carry over into the following year. Newsom said it demonstrates that prioritizing the health and well-being of workers “is of the utmost importance for California’s future.”
“Too many folks are still having to choose between skipping a day’s pay and taking care of themselves or their family members when they get sick,” Newsom said in a statement announcing his action.
A good start, but five days is still a laughable amount. That’s literally one illness, one time being sick.
laughs in german 🤣
Not true - you do not get infinite sick days
You get your regular salary for up to 6 weeks, after that there is a steep drop in pay - since you receive „sick pay“ then. After 72 weeks sick pay ends. Then you might be eligible for social security.
Thanks, compared to 5 days, 6 weeks subjectively feels infinite (for an average healthy employee)
That is also not completely correct.
You can get infinite sick days. It just has to be a different illness every 6 weeks. (not repeating the same year)
Cries in a different US state where our company busted us from 40 hours of sick time to 24 to make every plant in the country equal to California’s minimum because it’s the only state with one of our facilities that has a minimum. I’m curious to see if this ends up bringing all our plants up to 40 hours or they hope none of us lowly factory workers pays attention to this sort of thing. I’ll be asking at the next communication meeting.
English is descriptive not prescriptive, nobody owns the English language nor has a more correct version, and that’s coming from Oxford University.
Meanwhile in Germany…
You’re legally entitled to six weeks of continuous sick leave paid by your employer, after which your health insurer will take over the costs. If you’ve had sick leave for the same illness multiple times in the same year, these days will be accumulated. After six weeks of regular paid sick leave, you’ll receive Krankengeld (lit. ‘sick money’) for a maximum of 90 percent of your wage after taxes for up to 72 weeks.
Yes, true, but i will take this win.
Newsom increased the minimum wage for fast food workers and now this? I will take these little victories
Yes. I want full blown socialism in America but that isn’t going to happen over night. The unions fought for our 40 hour work week, weekends, and more and those were small victories.
This was a small victory and I will take it. It makes the living conditions od California better and this may get the ball going.
Wasn’t there a post on some “ask”-community a couple of days ago with a question like “If you could live in a socialist country, would you?”. And I think the implied socialism is something like this?
Hahahaha Germany a socialist country!
Our great public wellfare system including healthcare, pensions etc. are called Rhine-Capitalism for a reason. In fact our conservatives, the Christian Democrats build it.
What these people call “socialism” was build by the German religious conservatives (admittedly to keep the social democrats and unions from gaining even more power), which might explain why we keep laughing so hard at Fox News Fuckwits calling Germany a socialist country.
Continuous sick leave is different from sick days. Many states require sick leave, and the US guarantees 12 weeks leave through FMLA, though it’s unpaid, with the government picking up payments after that (iirc). Regardless, a metric ton of companies offer paid long-term sick leave by just carrying insurance policies that pay out your salary if you have a doctor’s note.
I have unlimited vacation time which also applies to sick days, and the company pushes people to use it. I’m looking to have taken around six weeks this year.
I’m aware this is not a common occurrence, but it’s not as though there’s absolutely no laws around this and nobody has paid sick days at all.
Even my shitty little country has universal healthcare and paid sick leave. Employees can call in sick for couple of days, after which they have to open up a sick leave with the doctor. At this point government picks up paying them good chunk of their salary. After two months there’s a mandatory panel of doctors meeting which decides if leave needs to be extended further.
The US Federal Government offers 13 paid sick days a year (that rollover indefinitely)…and between 13 and 26 vacation days (depending on service time)…and all federal holidays off paid. It’s not quite on the level of Europe, but it’s a damn sight better than most of the rest of the country.
It’s more than that…
6 hrs a pay period for 26 pay periods, divide that by 8 to get days…
19.5 sick days a year.
(I was wrong about that, but still)
Federal employees have one of the strongest unions in the country. But it’s not like they can help people outside their own union.
The voters need to elect politicians will to make this stuff legislation for every American worker.
It’s 4hrs a pay period for 26 pay periods for sick leave, at least in my command. But I’m interested if this varies across the government…
Yep, you’re right.
No idea why I was thinking 6
Even by Australian standards that is still pretty good, except it’s generally 20-30 days annual leave here in any permanent FT job and 10-15 sick days, some of which is already accrued at beginning of employment.
Just to be clear they’re talking about jobs working for the federal government.
What kind of success is that? Asking this coming from a country where we have 6 weeks of sick days before the income is covered by the health care system.
If you tell someone who is starving that you won’t give them any food, they might decide there’s nothing left to lose and try to fight you for their survival.
If instead you give that person just a bit of food - not enough to actually feed them, just enough to give them hope of satiation - rather than getting a knife in the ribs you might just get a grateful handshake and thanks.
They’ll still starve, but with far less struggle.
It’s that kind of success.
Small. It’s one state and anywhere run by Republicans is stuck at the federal minimum of 0. This number will never go higher because Republican legislators won’t vote for it because they hate workers, and Democratic legislators are from states that already implemented higher wages and sick days so it’s a red state problem.
It’s the same way with cannabis legalization and I expect they’ll do the same with abortion.
