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Stay Home When You're Sick!
theodp writes "If you've got Google CEO Larry Page's billions, you can reduce your chances of getting sick this winter by personally providing free flu shots to all San Francisco Bay Area kids at Target pharmacies. 'Vaccinating children,' explains the Shoo the Flu initiative's website, 'will not only improve children's health, it will also dramatically reduce the risk of the flu spreading to adults.' But Tim Olshansky doesn't have Page's money, so he'll have to settle for trying to get it through people's thick heads that they really have to stay home when they're sick. 'Why do people still come to the office when they're coughing up a lung?' asks the exasperated Olshansky. 'Because unfortunately, there is a still a strong perverse culture that equates staying at home when sick with weakness. This is a flawed belief and should be questioned. Given that we have the tools now to complete most tasks from home, there is no strong reason to compel people to come to the workplace.' So, does your employer encourage employees to stay home when they're sick? How?"
Bullshit. Unions force this. See, if I give unlimited sick days, and you have a union, I can't fire you for using an unlimited number of sick days. Ergo, I have given you unlimited vacation time. However, if I give you a number of vacation days and call half of them sick days, then you can decide to take a vacation day whenver you want and I just deal with it. If I could fire the 3% the union works hardest to protect, then you'd get unlimited sick days and some reasonable number of vacation days that you can schedule, because I'd really rather you schedule your days off so your groups can get the work scheduled around your vacation. However, your union fucked you to protect 2 people who are unwilling to work.