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Corporations Hiring Hooky Hunters
No longer satisfied with your crinkled doctor's note, a growing number of corporations are hiring "Hooky Detectives." Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days. From the article: "Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick — almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008."
These corporate sociopath CEO's have enough money to hire private investigators to stalk us. They can come up with whatever excuse or have no reason at all. These investigators have the power to ruin marriages, friendships, careers.
What can we do about the Gestapo America? BTW this article should be titled "Corporations hire professional stalkers to track employees outside of the workplace."
Instead of having to police sick days, a simpler solution would be to combine sick days and vacation days into "earned time off" or similar. Let the employee use the time as they see fit, no policing required, and you probably get better morale in the deal too.
ERROR: Null
Why are we allowing employers to put us into neo-feudalism? Can't you see these employers are doing what government wants to do but can't get away with?
It still counts as a sick day if you're taking the day off for your mental health, right?
Of course, if American employers would just provide a reasonable number of vacation days, this wouldn't be an issue; unfortunately it seems like the company has to squeeze you for every last ounce of productivity, even when squeezing less might make you more productive.
This is a list of the amount of paid days you are required to give your employees:
Finland 30
Frankrike 30
Förenade Arab Emiraten 30
Estland 28
Litauen 28
Polen 26
Danmark 25
Grekland 25
Luxemburg 25
Sverige 25
Österrike 25
Israel 24
Malta 24
Tyskland 24
Ungern 23
Portugal 22
Spanien 22
Cypern 21
Egypten 21
Marocko 21
Rumänien 21
Sydafrika 21
Australien 20
Belgien 20
Bulgarien 20
Irland 20
Italien 20
Japan 20
Lettland 20
Nederländerna 20
Nya Zeeland 20
Slovakien 20
Slovenien 20
Storbritannien 20
Tjeckien 20
Sydkorea 19
Malaysia 16
Libanon 15
Hong Kong 14
Pakistan 14
Singapore 14
Taiwan 14
Vietnamn 14
Indien 12
Indonesien 12
Kanada 10
Thailand 6
Filipinerna 5
USA 0
from unt.se
I don't get it. Work is not school.
i was going to make a snide joke: how can a private eye spy on a guy in a dark basement room with no windows, who doesn't eat, sleep or use the bathroom (real WoW payers use Depends!)
but then i thought: if you are playing WoW instead of going to work today, you really are suffering from a kind of sickness, aren't you?
and therefore, you are using your sick day appropriately
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The only examples provided were of employees suspected of fraud while on medical leave.
I see ZERO examples of a private dick being dispatched because someone took a sick day.
This does not include days like Halloween and Christmas etc.
Employee longevity has dropped from 30-some years to about 3. Maybe corporate hiring policy should take that into account when doling out vacation time. I may not have been with the company for long, but I do have 20 years behind me and would like a new position to start out with something more than 2 weeks off.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
If we're overworked, the environment sucks, the work itself sucks, or any combination of those, then companies shouldn't be surprised. The idea of a "mental health" sick day shouldn't be seen as absurd. It's one reason why the best and smaller companies offer more vacation even to new hires.
Unfortunately some companies (and the US work environment in general) really dont give a shit about their employees well being. Oh how I wish we had European workplace rules. At least we're not Japan.
The U.S. Military, which is known for working people a lot harder than most corporations, still gives 30 days a year of paid leave. No 'Sick Days'. You could not take days off and build up 60 days if you wanted to. Anything over that was just paid back to you at end of year. It was the best policy I have ever worked under.
Now you couldn't always take your leave when you wanted to, for obvious reasons, but it worked and it's good for morale.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
...on the Sunday morning when I'm on an eight hour outage call starting at 4AM...
or the Monday night when I stay at the office until 10 working on a time sensitive launch...
do they turn the "hooky" clock backwards in that case?
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
This is such BS. If my company did that I would try to organize a massive Hooky Day! I am not a big fan of the union scene but this is just the sort of crap that causes people to get together and create them. Corporations simply need to understand that running on a skeleton crew is what makes them less productive!
Overworked employees make more mistakes, hate their jobs more, have overall poorer health which affects productivity, and facilitates the installation of a revolving door at the front. No matter how cool your technology, processes, or systems become... people will forever remain your most powerful asset. If you treat them well, give them perks, pay fairly, and maintain flexibility you will have a crew that can perform as well as another crew with twice as many people under a punk boss!
This is all fairly common sense, yet a common sense that is lost on most supervisors as they continue to strain the credulity of their efforts to minimize cost, and squeeze the last ounce of productivity out the lifeless worker drones!
From google translate:
Finland 30
France 30
United Arab Emirates 30
Estonia 28
Lithuania 28
Poland 26
Denmark 25
Greece 25
Luxembourg 25
Sweden 25
Austria 25
Israel 24
Malta 24
Germany 24
Hungary 23
Portugal 22
Spain 22
Cyprus 21
Egypt 21
Morocco 21
Romania 21
South Africa 21
Australia 20
Belgium 20
Bulgaria 20
Ireland 20
Italy 20
Japan 20
Latvia 20
Netherlands 20
New Zealand 20
Slovakia 20
Slovenia 20
UK 20
Czech Republic 20
Korea 19
Malaysia 16
Lebanon 15
Hong Kong 14
Pakistan 14
Singapore 14
Taiwan 14
Vietnam 14
India 12
Indonesia 12
Canada 10
Thailand 6
Philippines 5
USA 0
J. Edgar Hoover approves of your comment.
Don't be fooled. This is a power play by employers to take even more power from the deunionized employee base. They want to destroy the middle class once and for all and the best way to do that is to reduce the employee to utter powerlessness and promote only the obsequious.
If the boss gets pissed off, a team of investigators can permanently neutralize you. If you think the Union leader can protect you then they'll neutralize him too via investigation. It's a new way to find dirt on people, and it's creepy.
So the PI uses the honey trap on you, you flirt with this new woman and now the PI gives that information to your boss. If you piss off your boss you can lose both your career and your marriage? Tell me how this can be avoided.
There's something wrong with your translation, USA still gets 0! Maybe you should try to translate to corporate-speak; this usually changes the facts in no time.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Yeah, but that is what they are required to give. The real question is what do they actually give? I work for a small company (>5 employees) and get 15 days vacation, 1 day sick, 6 holidays for a total of 22 paid days off per year. My last job I got 6 holidays and 10 vacation days for a total of 16 days off. How many people are really working with no paid time off in the US above the minimum wage/burger flipper levels?
Do you Gentoo!?
It's not as bizarre and unlikely as you are hoping it is. Companies like HP sees no problem in doing all sorts of spying on their employees. Companies see no problem in making employees sign a "anything you create on or off company time belongs to us" agreements. They would certainly see no problem with "as long as you are employed by us, you agree to make available to us [this information]." There are no laws against it, therefore it is legal. And if it is legal, it is right and good. Also, it will take a lot of abuse before people voluntarily make themselves unemployed and if any number of employers want to do this, they will all do it.
If you want an example what people are willing to put up with in the U.S., go travel somewhere by airplane.
And by it, I mean the corporate machinery, which includes the leadership of many corporations who see their employees as means to an end rather than the end itself.
Corporations also are trying to take on the role once held by government. This conveniently will allow Sarah Palin to team up with Mitt Romney and Rand Paul to bring moral values into the workplace while at the same time forcing us to be in that place for longer and longer hours. And if we get sick of it then we have to deal with an investigation?
And if you blog about it then you get called crazy like Joel Harris.
If any of y'all bothered to RTFA (madness, I know), you'd have found that they aren't talking about random one-off sick days. They are investigating people on long-term disability leave. Taking a sick day because your job is stressful is not the issue here, and frankly would not be worth hiring a private dick. These people are on extended periods of paid leave for what are supposed to be debilitating health issues - the whole point of being off work is because you're not in any shape to do the work. If you throw out your back, and they give you 6 months of paid leave to rest and recover, it sort-of looks bad if you start major renovations on your house the following week. It also constitutes insurance fraud, something a tad more serious than a few I.T. guys taking the day off to play Cataclysm.
Given that I know of a bunch of people who are exploiting the system right now, shafting their fellow coworkers, driving up the premiums, and of course sticking the honest ones with overtime to make up for it, well I feel no sympathy for the hypocrites and I whole-heartedly endorse these investagators. Hell, we just outed one a few months back. Not only did this person have a long history of feigning chronic pain and stress, but she was doing it twice! When she was on leave from one job, she'd work at a 2nd, and vice versa. Once the taxman is done tearing her a new one, she gets to defend herself in court against two insurance firms. Not that I like the insurance racket any, but someone needs to punish these socially defective crooks.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
"Sick" days? That's, like, you're sick, you do no work, you're unproductive, but you still get paid?
Nice gig.
It's always a kick to see how cube-dwellers squeal when one of their work "rights" is threatened; the same cube-dwellers who want to preach to artists, writers and musicians about how they should be earning their keep in "the digital age" and when/when not to expect payment for what kind of work.
This doesn't have much to do with being a cube-dweller, it has to do with being a salaried employee.
Hourly employees are paid for the hours they work. Don't show up to work, don't get paid. Work 50+ hours in a week, get paid for 50+ hours that week.
Salaried employees get paid a fixed wage largely unrelated to the number of hours they work in a given week. This is because it is assume that there are occasions that they'll work significantly more than 50 hours in a week. Sick leave, personal leave, vacation time, etc. are all ways of compensating salaried employees for that extra time they put in but don't get paid for.
I used to work at Electronics Boutique. During the holidays we'd put in some very long hours. 10+ hour days became the norm. You'd see some very nice paychecks for a while there. But if I got sick and couldn't make it in to work I didn't get paid anything at all.
I now work in IT at a hospital. I'm a salaried employee. I get sick leave and vacation time. Last week I put in 11 hours on Monday, 15 hours on Thursday, and then another 2 hours at 4:00 AM on Sunday - in addition to the normal 8-hour days in-between. I wound up with 52 hours last week. I'll get paid the same as if I worked 40.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
For completeness you'd want GDP per capita. That does not seem to correlate much with vacation times - as you can see, most of Western Europe is on par with US, and sometimes higher.
You don't think most of the people at the top aren't sociopaths?
The sad fact is that to reach those high levels, it's not only not a hindrance, it's practically a requirement. It's not an indictment of successful people, but rather the way "the system" works. Sociopathy is ultimately rewarded, while honesty, thrift, efficiency... all those things we were taught are good are often impediments to rising through the ranks.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Sounds like a modern interpretation of the iron law of wages. If your belt can be tightened, someone should tighten it for you because you owe it to your company. If you aren't getting sick, you don't need days off because you owe that time to the company, and you'd just fritter it away having babies or something which would only decrease your productivity, or relaxing which might make you care less about the company's success. Rather than give you that time or give you the money spent on these stalkers, it's in everyone's best interests if the company keeps an eye on you.
My company took the opposite stance: there is no distinction between sick and vacation days; they are all personal days. The only caveat is calling in sick on more than four different instances within a twelve month period is strongly discouraged. The wording is "grounds for termination," but I suspect that is a soft rule.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Those that have the balls to not roll over and play dead for big daddy employer.
In fact I go further... I come in at 7:30 and leave at 4:30 to avoid traffic congestion. I was asked about it ONCE, I responded with, "It makes me more productive and I get more done, would you prefer I get less done?"
The COO shut up and walked away.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The point is that this is the minimum required amount enforced by the law. You cannot summarily take this time away and not face enormous fines. Except in USA because there aren't any.
For the record, I live in Finland, which is on top of that list with 30 days, and we're still considered among the top economies in the world in terms of competitiveness. Thing is, if a key employee needs to work extra, he can stockpile these days (my father does that for example). Once he had to work two years without leave days. Then the financial crisis hit, and folks were put on unpaid leave.
He just took his 60 days of paid vacation instead and flew around the world with my mom. Employer was actually HAPPY and even pressured him into taking the paid vacation, because it meant another person less they had to account for with bureaucracy needed to put people on unpaid leave.
It's a system that works, keeps people fresh so they don't burn out, allows for time with the family, and yet still grants key employees an ability to work with no leave if company needs them to, and they want to (i.e. properly incentified while preventing the pressure when employee doesn't want to.
Gonna go out on a limb here and guess you don't own a business...
Um, here's a better list (and in English).
The US is in bold and has a star. Do you know why? Because there's no minimum requirement, that is apparently the average at several large firms. This means that the US's statistic is essentially bullshit; if they measured the other countries' days off using the same criteria as the US's, all of the other statistics would get bumped up (after all, the values can't go down due to regulation, so the only direction they can go is up).
Anyway, as for your 22 paid days off: you're including holidays and sick days. The number for (say) Finland does not include that - they get 30 days of strictly vacation time, not including holidays and sick days. When you sort by total number of days off, the US still ranks near the bottom - and they would probably be at the bottom, if the statistics were at all comparable.
Basically, corporations have US workers bent over the table and we're laying there saying "It's not so bad, at least I get six holidays".
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
I have seen that more than once. In fact, In fact, I have seen that more than once with the same person leading to the same end.
Similarly, vs a background of sociopathy a non-sociopathic company is guaranteed a considerable competitive advantage.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Will the executives be subject to this also? I can suggest staking out golf courses, marinas (when weather is nice of course), Martha's Vineyard (or wherever the local trophy home location is), and their secretary's apartments.
The title of the article is deceptive though. It isn't about people being stalked because they took a sick day or two off, it is about people abusing long term medical leave. That I have to admit I don't have a problem with them investigating. If you say you are unable to work because you can't walk and they catch you helping your neighbor move a sofa down 5 flights of stairs then I'd agree you should be busted.
Investigating someone for being out 3 days with the flu strikes me as a bit petty though. Maybe the problem at that point is your employees need some vacation time or you just have lousy moral. Firing people left and right won't make the remaining ones any better and won't guarantee you will magically get a flood of super workers to replace them (or that they won't end up as unhappy as the first bunch).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
iDoubt it.
"But this one goes to 11!"
GDP? Sure, but per capita of course. And we should look at GINI (generally the higher the GINI the higher the disparities between rich and poor).
Finland, topping the list at 30 days leave has a per capita GDP of 44, 650 and a GINI of 26.9
France also requires 30 days leave and has a per capita GDP of 42.747 and GINI of 32.7
Estonia requires 28 days leave and has a per capita GDP of 14,266and GINI of 34
Lithuania requires 28 days leave and has a per capita GDP of $16,542 and a GINI of 36
Sweden a little down on the list, gives 25 days of leave and as a per capita GDP of 36,502 and GINI of 23
Austria also gives 25 days of leave and has a per capita GDP of $39,454. and a GINI of 26
samples from the lower end of the pack,
Pakistan: 14 d/$1067/31.2
Vietnam : 14 d/$1060/37
India : 12 d/$1124/36.8
The three lowest economically advanced countries comparable to the US:
Australia: 20d/$45,285/30.5
Belgium: 20d/$43/794/28
Japan : 20d/$41,366/38.1
Netherlands: 20d/$48,233/30.9
New Zealand: 20d/$31,067/36.2
Canada : 12d/$45,657/32.1
The USA requires 0 days leave and has a per capita GDP of 46,381 and a GINI quotient of 45
Now in aggregate the data is all over the place, but there are obvious clusters (e.g. the Baltic states with their post co mmunist economies, high leave days, low GDP, moderately high GINI). In general, GINI seems to be a little better predictor of leave days than per capita GDP. About the only strong generalization you can make is that countries with low GINIs (that is to say relatively small income distribution disparity) tend to give lots of leave days.
The countries with the smallest income disparities in the world:
Sweden (23) :? :?
Norway (25) : ?
Austria (26) : 25 d
Czech Republic (26)
Luxembourg (26) : 25 d
Malta (26)
Serbia (26): ?
Slovakia (26): 20d
Albania (26.7)
Germany (27): 24d
South Africa is an outlier, with a GINI of 65(!!!) and 21 days of leave, but of course history accounts for those figures. You have a population of economic elite that accumulated vast wealth under apartheid, and a transition to popular rule that left that wealth in their hands.
So, here's the conclusion I'd draw. Where people on the bottom of the economic scale are relatively powerful, either by commanding a large share of a nation's wealth or by historical events that make them influential beyond their economic means, countries tend to require companies give employees lots of leave. We *can't* draw the conclusion that lots of required paid leave impoverishes a country. We can find examples for that of course, but more counter-examples.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This does not include days like Halloween and Christmas etc.
Who the hell gets Halloween as a paid holiday?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
My company took the opposite stance: there is no distinction between sick and vacation days; they are all personal days. The only caveat is calling in sick on more than four different instances within a twelve month period is strongly discouraged. The wording is "grounds for termination," but I suspect that is a soft rule.
Wait a sec. You call in sick 4 times in a year and they fire you? THAT'S FUCKED UP. It may even be illegal if you can prove you were ill.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yes, because working at GM, Ford, etc was a workers paradise before the big bad unions came along, hellbent on destroying the company.
If you believe you would have _any_ benefits, a single one, without the unions coming before you are delusional.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
The hyperbole is strong with this one! No, unions are not inherently bad. But can't we appreciate the irony of teachers' pension funds being wiped out when GM defaulted on their bonds so that unions could have THEIR benefits?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
PHB protip: 40% of all sick days are taken on Monday or Friday! FORTY PERCENT!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
God the mods are gullible sometimes, all you have to do is call everyone stupid and say RTFA and the mods are like "oh yeah, they really should *mod up*".
"Raymond investigated an employee at a Florida health organization who called in sick with the flu for three days."
"In 2009, four firefighters in Haverhill, Mass., were suspended after a private investigator, hired by the mayor, caught them attending hockey games and engaging in other blatantly non-sick-day activities."
And then there's the 'easy' solution, just track all your employees, all the time.
"Ahearn once had a client who issued each of his employees a mobile phone with a GPS tracking system."
While this is a nice theory, nothing in my experience seems to bear out your conclusions. By your theory, corporations should become less sociopathic over time. I've seen just the opposite. For your theory to really work, all workers would have to have the realistic option of leaving any employer that demonstrates sociopathic behavior, at any time. The elites have done everything in their power to ensure that as many working class people are as desperate as possible, and unable to effectively resist sociopathic actions by their employers. Also, it seems to me that capitalism, as a system, seems supremely uninterested in anything but the short term.
In fact, I would postulate an alternative hypothesis, that in any area dominated by sociopaths, even non-sociopaths must adopt sociopathic behaviors to compete.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sociopathy does not work in the long term. It provides short term gain and hence it is the fashion of the day.
In the long term not having empathy is a fatal flaw for a manager. If a manager does not have empathy he does not know how far to turn the screws before the workforce revolts. So he turns them too tight and the team fails to deliver, leaves or outright revolts and tries to lynch mob the management.
Does this work long enough for the manager to become filthy rich?
Does the inevitable failure of this model prevent the manager from finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew? Or prevent them from leaving before the chickens come home to roost, finding employment at another place and starting the cycle anew?
We engineers and other practical-minded people often take to broad a view when discussing what "works", considering things like the long-term health of the company etc. This is why we are often caught off guard by the seemingly irrational actions of sociopaths that when considered from the viewpoint of who the sociopath actually cares about -- themselves and themselves alone -- the strategy is almost entirely upside.
The enemies of Democracy are
From the referenced article:
>This summer, Middletown, Pa., schoolteacher Leslie Herneisey -
>a three-time Teacher of the Year nominee - was arrested and
>charged with lying to colleagues about having an inoperable brain
> tumor so she could take extended sick leave.
I love journalists. Since when is lying to colleagues an offense you can be arrested for?
Look up 'at will employment'. It's a beautiful libertarian dream, where the people in several states voted to reverse a hundred years of workers' rights and place the balance of power back entirely in the hand of employers, where it belongs.
With power should come responsibility. 'At will employment' is simply employers shirking that responsibility. Employers who sap the life out of their workers and discard them when they can no longer work are nothing but leeches. The idea that we'll have a better world when this is allowed to happen is nothing more than self-serving irrational hand-waving by those who stand to gain from this practice in the short term. Their businesses do not operate in a vacuum and their business operating and making profits rely on society permitting the business to operate.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I wish and hope that some day companies will start to address mental health as well as physical heath, specifically related to sick days. If you have a sniffle, they tell you not to come in to work, you'll make someone sick, but if you're stressed out, unable to sleep, on-call for weeks, going through a breakup/divorce, have sick parents etc, and can't handle the mental strain, then you're SOL. Work on a salary? you know all those extra hours you put in for free for the company? Want to get something *back* from them? yeah, right ...
"Mental Health" days are widely recognized by non-management types as beneficial, but you don't see companies promoting them. 'take a vacation day' is the common line, but when you're only provided with 10 of them a year , it's awefully 'expensive' to take one because your boss has had you working 12 hour days for 2 weeks and you just need 1 freakin day off to sleep, do laundry, maybe buy some real food for a change.
But seriously, mental health, when you work in a job that is focused on mental performance (as much of IT/geekery is), is just as, or more, important as physical health. I can sit and read documents/manuals, catch up on email, update a few spreadsheets etc with a cold, but if I'm tired/stressed/"out of it", I'm next to useless.
Taking care of employees isn't a concern of companies any longer, if it ever was, despite the fact that giving a little can get them a lot. Policy, process, executive bonuses are all worked around 'you must be in your desk working from x to y and always being productive, or else', instead of the realization that we aren't machines and our brains are more valuable when they're functional than not.
$0.02.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
So, basically, as long as you get your 47 days off per year, everyone else can get bent? You don't see a problem, because obviously, everyone could just get a job like yours if they wanted the time off?
And one wonders why government employees get a bad name...
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Companies hire you for a 40-hour work week, and then feel no compunction about working you twice that. I know of more than one company that refuses to allow employees to take vacations -- always "too busy now, try again in a couple of months" -- and then institute "hour caps." effectively screwing workers out of their vacations. I know of others that refuse to allow legitimate comp time to be taken.
Once upon a time, after working three 70-hour weeks back-to-back-to-back, and then being asked to put in a fourth week of the same, I came down with a good solid, three-day case of the "flu." To be honest, I actually did feel like hell.
Workers start faking sick days when companies fail to honor their agreements on reasonable work weeks, vacations and comp time.
Now, companies have started hiring private detectives to shadow workers outside of the job. Welcome back to the bad old days of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency
During the labor unrest of the late 19th century, businessmen hired Pinkerton agents to infiltrate unions, and as guards to keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories. The best known such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to enforce the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie, who was abroad; the ensuing conflicts between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to several deaths on both sides. The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
The private detectives aren't there just to enforce sick days. They're also there to quash the unions you advocate as a solution.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I've not been off sick for a couple of years. Of course, I'm not American and I don't live in the US, so my evil socialist healthcare system has no vested interest in keeping me sick so I keep paying for medicines I don't really need.
Now all I need to do is work out a way to take the 15 days holiday I have left off, when there are less than 15 working days left in the year...
You seem to be looking at the robber baron era through the great depression, then mysteriously skipping fifty years or so when more worker friendly government regulations and programs like the new deal gave workers more power to negotiate, and corporations were forced to act more responsibly.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Just to clarify, that list isn't quite correct either. Different countries measure differently.
For example the 28 days (4 weeks) in Estonia is just that, 4 weeks vacation, not 28 working days (close to 6 weeks of vacation). You are supposed to take it in chunks of at least 1 week obviously, and by law you have to have one vacation of at least 2 weeks in length. For Canada however, the 10 days means 10 working days, so really 2 weeks.
Holidays - again quite a big difference. In Estonia, if a holiday falls on a weekend, it doesn't get carried over to the next week like it does in Canada. So hence some years you'll have more actual holidays than others. In 2010, 7 out of the 12 holiday days in Estonia fall on actual working days. In 2011, only 5.
Sick days - another difference maker. All depends on local labour law and how sick pay is legislated. In Estonia, the first 3 days are considered your "deductible", to use an insurance term, so you don't get paid anything by anyone. Days 4 through 8, your employer pays 70% of your calculated daily wage (calculated from your last 6 months of employment). From day 9 onwards, the state pays 70% of your calculated daily wage (calculated from your previous calendar year's income). In the province of Ontario, Canada, by law you are allowed up to 10 unpaid sick days per year, but most Canadian employers provide paid sick days, some even bankable and some allow it to be paid out if you leave the company.
So all in all, tables such as this are rather meaningless without an actual analysis of the labor laws and practices of each country.