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Hundreds of Walmart Employees Say They've Been Punished For Taking Sick Days (vice.com)
A new report from the workers advocacy group A Better Balance alleges that Walmart consistently punishes employees for taking sick days, even if they have proper documentation from doctors. From a report: A Better Balance interviewed and surveyed more than 1,000 Walmart workers about the company's absence control program -- which awards disciplinary "points" for absences regardless of reason -- and found the retail giant to be in violation of multiple laws. "Giving a worker a disciplinary 'point' for being absent due to a disability or for taking care of themselves or a loved one with a serious medical condition is not only unfair," the report reads, "in many instances, it runs afoul of federal, state, and local laws." Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove told the Times that the allegations are false, and that the company "understand[s] that associates may have to miss work on occasion," and that they "have processes in place to assist them." The report's worker testimonials say differently. "I came down with a stomach flu and I had to call in due to vomiting and high fever and got a point cause of being sick," recalls an Illinois employee named Veronica. "I hate the fact we got to worry about getting fired cause we caught the flu."
There seems to be an inconsistency, on the one hand they are employees and on the other they are associates. Which is it really?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Those with bootstraps don't get sick, you should all learn from them!
Really, it's Walmart. Is anyone actually surprised by this?
Walmart treats employees like shit...I'm deeply shocked.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
prescriptive linguistics done school you. Whomst'd've taught you languaging?
It means that maybe someone should investigate to see if it's true. Let us know when it's more than an agenda-driven allegation. Thanks.
That explains why I get sick when I go to Walmart. Having sick employees around the food and products I buy.. I am gonna have a bad time...
You are a dick. I take sick days when a doctor gives me a note saying I need a sick day. Like for having a major operation under full anesthesia that last for another day. Or for when being contagious with actual flu. Or when I had to stay in for observation. Then again I am from Europe and you can't take a sick day without a doctor's note saying you are sick and you or the public health require that you isolate yourself from the public. Sick days without a doctor's note are a problem in the US, but because of your broken health system it is impossible to get same day appointments for acute conditions
they will point you no matter the reason then if they dont like you they will try to add on points for no reason i rember in my entire stay there i missed 1 day and they tried to say i had 6 points. they also play favrets to people who kiss there ass vs those that do not. just me if that company can brake a labor law they do.
Walmart is scum. News at 11.
Unfortunately the masses of Trump voters are too desperate to put food on their tables and cannot vote with their feet to move to a "better" job, despite the incredibly low bar Wallmart presents, and they are religiously committed to hating unions, so will not organize or offer any other form of self-defense or even resistance.
Fodder is the word that comes to mind.
How is unproven allegations about the sick day policy of a retailer "news for nerds"?
There is no IT angle here I can discern.
Why is this on Slashdot? Unless, of course, they're moving full steam ahead with their "All Social Justice Warrior, all the time" format.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
It says so right above the non-compete clause
If you post it, they will read.
...to reward good attendance.
Points don't sound like penalties. How many points until there's an effect? If it's a hundred points, then that makes a lot of sense.
On a separate note, as an entrepreneur, I don't get paid when I don't work.
You know what sucks even more than not earning money when I'm sick? Paying an employee, who's home sick, while I'm also home sick not getting paid a dime.
A good lesson for all the kids out there. Learn proper grammar.
If WalMart introduces grammar screening for their "associates", they're going to alienate a lot of their labor pool. Actually that goes for a lot of places - Proper grammar seems to be a rarity. Not everyone talks as goodly as you and I.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove told the Times that the allegations are false, and that the company "understand[s] that associates may have to miss work on occasion," and that they "have processes in place to assist them.
Randy is a Liar. I was a Sam's Club Manager and they look for ANY Reason to let a Employee Go if it does not benefit the store or club. This also includes finding excuses to get rid of employees that work hard and get up to a too high a pay cost. So we are told to reward hard work with betrayal all based on a 25 cent cost per hour cost increase
Why do sick days even exist as a concept. Shouldn't you get paid for the value you actually provide to others? How are you providing value by being sick?
If sick days (and all other paid time off) didn't exist then hourly pay could be higher. Those that were genuinely sick on occasion would find their overall pay unchanged and wouldn't be harassed in this way. Those that were very healthy could earn even more. Those that were sickly would earn less because they'd be less helpful to the rest of society. Finally, if we value the sickly and feel that they deserve money despite their inability to help then isn't this precisely what charity is for? Do we bury this charity in the labour contract because we're ashamed to help those in need or because we can't admit that we actually wouldn't donate and that sickly people would really struggle.
There was an article a couple days ago about how white-collar employees in the US are afraid of using their vacation time...this seems like a good bookend to that. The bottom line is that there are very few nice, generous employers anymore. I work for one that actually treats us pretty well; we have on-your-honor sick days and reasonable amounts of vacation. However, stores like this are necessary to show once in a while that employers will take advantage of you at any turn, and some of them are quite bad.
You see stuff like this a lot in low-margin, low-paying employers with what they consider a disposable workforce. I'm sure Amazon is guilty of this with their warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc. I guarantee that with steady jobs getting scarcer every day, and a constant narrative depicting business owners as superhuman infallible beings, nothing is going to get better. People are going to be happy to have any kind of job that gives them a steady paycheck, and that's even more true for those at the low end of the skills curve.
When I see stuff like this, it makes me wish labor unions were more powerful like they once were. Unions would never have backed down on something like this, and union members were happier because of it. All those coal miners and manufacturing workers voting last November should realize that they would have been much better off had they been represented by a strong union. Working families used to be able to survive on one income, and now that's very difficult for most people to do. I'm still hoping the pendulum swings back the other direction before things get bad enough to have another revolution or civil war on our hands in the US.
So, if you wake up and feel pukey, you have to run to the doctor's office before you can call in sick? That sounds like a real pain in the ass and backwards of medical rights and advancements.
This is why many businesses just did away with sick days and gave employees free days instead of vacation, adding 5 days to their vacation time.
Now you can use those days for whatever you want.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Everybody gets sick sooner or later. Some people are fortunate enough to be on the tail end of the curve when it comes to luck, being one of them doesn't make you morally better.
Of course you might be one of those people who come to work and spread your germs around to the coworkers and customers. That doesn't make you morally better either; it makes you worse.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Walmart employees 1.4 million people in the USA.
In case anyone was wondering how we ended up with two WalMart-related front page stories so close to each other on one day...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Godaddy pulls this shit too with their call center employees.
My speling and grammer are much more gooderer than youre's!
The fact that they have an official "absence control program" tells you just about all you need to know.
Nope, no sig
Groot Am I
Penalizing workers for staying home when they're sick is a really bad idea. Because, naturally, people will come to work sick rather than risk a penalty, potentially spreading the illness to other workers and to customers. This seldom ends well, either for the parties involved or for the company.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Being cruel to employees violates laws? Well clearly, those laws shouldn't be in place then!
Laws that protect employees are just big brother socialism!
My work started doing this recently. Not all that happy about it. To make matters worse, the implemented it retroactively 2 years before the program actually existed, so I'm already half way through the program. They call it "Non-disciplinary", however if you advance into the program too far you can be let go, which sounds pretty disciplinary to me. I believe I effectively do not have any sick days anymore, I'll just go to work sick from now on, unless I get hit by a bus or something, at which point work will probably be the least of my worries.
I expect it is a bargaining ploy to the Union. i.e. "You wanna get rid of it? How about those pensions?"
Though Walmart doesn't even have that I suppose.
I honestly thought this was more normal. I'm not saying it's right. However, I've worked at a software company that had a points-based attendance policy and they actually denied me a raise one year because I called off for illness a few times. It was the worst kind of phone support job and I was a lot younger but I didn't think this was unusual. I definitely thought it was unethical, though. Also stupid, as it encouraged sick people to come in and get everyone else sick, which happened all the time.
Who is doing the assigning of these "points"? Is it Management? Do the managers get assigned points when they call in sick? Who assigns the points then, other managers, or lower level workers?
Do the points really effect a persons employment at a normal level? It sounds like it COULD be a simple employee behavior tracking system. Anything below a certain value is ignored but if you have too many points (sick days, disciplinary actions, etc) they might might look at your file a bit more closely. I'm all for bashing Walmart but it would be nice to know if this is something they actually deserve to be bashed over.
I was written up for calling in sick, 2 days in 2 years, they called me at home about 2 hours after I called in very angry with me.
I know they where angry because at the time they where violating OSHA laws... (Having 2 employee's only in the tires shop) bringing it down to one employee for 2 hours out of a day when it was lunch time. Long story short it was really upsetting to me, they knew I was sick as a dog because I was sick for days prior (barely able to work)
I could give more examples but those are other people's stories.
Also thank god I no longer work for them, Walmart is not a good company to work for.
And non-US workers wonder why US works don't use vacation and sick days when they have them...
Companies that get caught doing this need to made an example of. Major fines. The fines can't be small enough for a business to chalk it up to the 'cost of doing business' because that's what they do already.
No good deed goes unpunished.
to tell everyone that if you couldn't find a replacement you had to come in sick. This was at a restaurant. At the time it didn't occur to anyone to call him on it, but this was the 90s so the economy was good and it wasn't enforceable.
Every call center I ever worked in had sick people non-stop. Everybody was always sick because nobody could stay home when they got sick.
This is just how it is when you work in low pay industries in a bad economy. If you want it to stop you're gonna have to pass laws, but I'm guessing most people don't want it to stop. They might be uncomfortable with the idea of sick people forced to work or be homeless but they're much more uncomfortable with paying 5% more for stuff. Especially when they're getting paid less and less just like everybody else...
Walmart's even got a phrase for it: Save Money, Live Better. You're not destroying worker solidarity and driving working families into an endless cycle of poverty. You're Saving Money, Living Better.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
they're the greatest Union Busters in the world. I wouldn't even call them pros. They've elevated it to an art. From the moment you apply to the moment you're laid off for trying to Unionize they've thought of everything.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...for puking on a customer?
Most of us are grown ups here. Why the hell do we need a note from the doctor saying we were really sick? I thought we left primary school years ago. The few times I had to bring a note, was for the doctor to say I was cleared for work, or if I had work restrictions. That said, my previous employer had implemented something like this. We got 5 free sick days, and could use PTO, as long as we gave a week advance notice. Other than that, we got credited 1 point for each occurrence (not day. Calling in sick for 2 days in a row for the same thing counted as 1). Show up 5 minutes late, that is a half a point. Leave early? Half a point. Once we got to 10, we're disposed of. To make shit worst, it was on a rolling calendar year; the slate doesn't get cleaned on Jan 1st, as some people found out the hard way. Who's to blame for thing? IMHO (factually unsupported, btw), both the employees and the employers.
I lost seven days off when my employer combined sick and vacation. Compensatory time was unlimited, then reduced to a max of 40 hrs. It was a large municipal government and could operate with several people absent for a few days or weeks.
I work for a government agency that has a policy of disciplining employees who use more than 3 sick days a year even though they're given 10. If you use more sick days after the first notice you can be fired.
Which is a shame because it's just incentive to come in when sick.
Count the points in some systems. Some take points even with a doctor's note. The points can hit just as you become eligible for the FMLA. I don't think this is a coincidence
As i have been Recently employed at Walmart, I can verify there is a point system for absences and coachings.
Now on one hand this system seems fair for the employer,
as it keeps associates from just calling out when they feel like it and punishes them (AKA termination from employment ).
The system that is in place allows for and up to 6 points. According to them this is how it goes,
There are two types of absences:
Authorized, not part of your occurrence balance
Unauthorized, part of your occurrence balance
Late arrival or leave early = ½
absence = 1
No call/no Show = 4
3½ occurrence is the max you can have in your first 6 months (I believe it goes to six after the first 6 months )
points roll off 6 months from the date of the occurrences
Now to the other Hand, there very few Authorized occurrences types that can happen, ergo Doctor's Note,
Hospital notes from the ER, and whatever management deems (AKA kissing ass).
This not allow for other life stopping situations. Things like a Spouse or Child getting really sick and having to take care of them or your children,
a relative getting sick and you having to take care of them, your transportation breaking down (Bike, Bus, Car),
and many other small things that out of your control like your child being sent home from school and so forth.
As of this moment i personally sit at 3. one for me being sick, one for my spouse being sick and one because my child being sent home from school.
I also had to deal with a problem early on where i was working a Walmart remodel and the automated system said i missed days where i was clearly on the clock for the day. I was told one schedule and the system had me down for another. That BS made my occurences jump to 9. I had to make the managers fix it.
It took 3 different ones and HR to fix it.
Now the good old middle Finger part. If you are yelled at (AKA coaching ) for doing something wrong or stupid you get ½ of an occurrence. There is a system in place for you to fight it but that lends itself to the he said/she said problem.
This automated system works as intended to keep employees honest, But does not take into account the some of the real life problems that we deal with.
It is not perfect and has lots of room for improvement and fixes. first favoritism seems to be one of the biggest problems.
Second the human life events element seems not to be taken into account.
Do like it NO! do i understand YES! Do some people get screwed out of a job for stupid reasons YES!
As a long time reader of slashdot and recent being employed at Walmart, I Thought I would inform the conversation on the way the system works and the holes in it i see.
I used to work at Walmart's Deli. Really liked the job, actually, despite the pay. I told my manager I may need to drop down from 40 to 30 hours because I was taking 2 classes to finish my associates...he told me "you need to choose what is more important: this job or school". I clocked out for lunch and never came back. It took 6 FULL months before they finally called me to say I was fired...so for 6 months they somehow kept scheduling me and marking me as no call no show...
It's massive stupidity though. For one, I find many conditions will clear on their own in a day or two. I don't need a doctor to tell me that. So, I can be sick for 24 hours in the comfort of home or I can go wait for hours on end at urgent care and share whatever I have with the waiting room while they give me what they have and cough a co-pay (along with that lung) just because some asshole stuffed into a suit wants to treat everyone like children.
Even in school, a parent's note is good enough.
On a side note, I recall an article some time ago where a doctor wrote the requisite excuse note and included a nastygram about wasting limited medical resources by requiring a doctor's note for every brief absence.
No you don't. He said Europe but meant a specific country which I can tell you is at least not Germany because in Germany you usually only require a doctor's note if you're sick more than three days in a row. In the IT sector at least, which is where I worked when in Germany. And yes obviously people could start abusing it but that's easily visible and HR can take action then. Frees everybody else from bullshitting and getting each other sick. Sick days are also unlimited.
I got gastro in week two of my employment in Germany and I went to the doctor first thing in the morning (not walk in clinic or hospital just the doctor I had selected to be my GP because he was 5 min from my apartment) and got a note for 5 days. Was sick for a day or two here and there without a note required later that year and got a 10% raise that year.
Not every country is as crazy as the US.
Did I mention Walmart tried to get a hold in Germany? The bailed out. Their US labour tactics didn't fly and they can't operate unless they severely exploit their workers.
If you have FMLA, there is more protection. Some of these examples sound like sickly people or people with kids that inevitably get sick and need care. Neither are not necessarily FMLA cases. Anyone stop to consider some of those workers who frequently call in and are habitually tardy, the points are adding up, and when they call in it pushes them over the threshold? Shit my wife's employer dings more employees for "patterns of behavior" (subjective, because they feel like fucking with you) than objective occurrences.
Hey, it's probably a right to fire... oh, wait, haha, silly me: right to HIRE state. I get the two words confused, because whenever I hear about "right to hire" it has to do with canning some poor fuck.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
These kind of employers are pretty dumb to do this kind of stupid shit that can be fought on a legal basis.
If you want to fire someone, you just fire them. When someone asks you why, you say: because I said so. You do not have to give a reason. They're just fired. It is that simple.
It is also a two way street. As an employee you can just walk out, no reason given, no notice, nothing. I quit. Why? Because I said so.
I have been in both positions and have done both. It is perfectly legal here. (This could be different in other places, but I doubt it.)
I know of several Walmart employees that have been made to work overtime during the holidays without pay. I can't get them to agree to say anything because they need their job. I doubt it's corporate policy but I know things like this happen all the time there.
They threw up on the products before bagging them.
Cough. Cough a lot. Don't wash your hands if you're going to touch your supervisor's stuff... but do try to avoid your fellows on the floor. They don't deserve it, but management should get TB each and every time they can.
Ideally, if there's blood coming out, VISIT HEADQUARTERS AND SNEEZE EVERYWHERE.
Any accusations thrown your way should be deflected by employee loyalty and emphasizing the absence-control program. You're not making everybody sick, you're a good worker. They wouldn't punish you for being sick if it was actually dangerous.
See if you can get some plague fleas to bite you.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/02/185219/walmart-is-turning-its-employees-into-delivery-drivers-to-compete-with-amazon
I commented on the one linked here about how unlikely it would be that Walmart's attempt to force employees to use their own vehicles to deliver its merchandise would in fact be "voluntary".
This is exactly how it will be.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You could go to the doctor's offices or phone the doctor and kindly ask an home visit, if you feel too weak or have an high fever. I've asked very few sick days, but when I asked them was only because the doctor ordered me to stay at bed or when I was rushed to A&E.
Well, if you budget and plan based on 100% availability, you're somewhat optimistic. Typically, one figures that you'll lose at least 20-30 working days/year for paid sick/vacation/holidays. That works out to about 85-90% utilization.
Yeah, if there's a deadline looming, having people on a small team call in sick is a problem for the manager - the stress/hassle of dealing with it is why managers get paid more, in theory.
The real problem is employers who treat their employees like children. "Bring a note from the doctor." Kind of like when you were a kid and if you missed school you had to "bring a note from your parents."
Mine thought it was stupid, and gave me a blanket note at the beginning of the year saying that if I was absent it was with their permission. Trust. Instill it, then build on it.
Look at the potential for personal information leakage from a doctor's note. They just look up the doctor, and if it's a specialist, they can draw some prejudicial conclusions.
Cancer specialist? Oops - they're going to be a big insurance liability - better fire them.
Psychiatrist? Oops, they might be a nut case - better fire them.
Doctor specializing in sex changes? If they were female at birth, they're going to want a pay raise after the operation - better fire them.
And if they were born male? We don't need bathroom wars disrupting business - better fire them.
They're not paying you for the time off, so what makes them think they're entitled to pry into what is by definition private time, not time that you're employed? Just sign the thing "Arnold Horshak's mother" and when they ask WTF, say "Did I ever tell you about my uncle Max?" :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Then phased out the extra days, so you effectively have no sick days. The places that still have actual sick days have done studies, and found that employees perform better.
Learn to love Alaska
This would be the reason I get the flu every time I visit a Walmart.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
This has been the case for more than a decade, but 4 years ago the SDP decided one more way to "destroy the morale of veteran teachers and drive a wedge between the union (PFT) and workers was to force everyone who get 3 instances of absence into disciplinary meetings. As per the bureaucracy of the SDP, if you make it to a second disciplinary meeting, your chances of prevailing plummet -- "clearly you must be a horrible employee if you are here a second time!" is the assumption in the central office; especially for the same infraction. Principals thought the new rule harsh and unreasonable -- it applied a solution needed only for a small minority of teachers who are chronically absent, to everyone, so they enforced it with discretion. The SDP responded the next school year by mandating that it be applied to EVERYONE, and data would be checked, those principals who were found derelict would be disciplined themselves.
Three years on, teachers who are new and don't "get" the process routinely get fired, suspended or quit after a year or two because they run afoul of the policy. Those who are chronically absent on purpose have learned to "game" the system, and still call out regularly with no repercussions, and many sick teachers come to work and get sicker, or worse. There have been off the record discussions of how a flu-like bug, or "stomach flu" will spread through a school in a week or so, where in the past one or two would be out and that's all.
The SDP officially refuses to budge on the policy because "children can't learn if the teacher is not there", but after years of allowing the substitute system to fail and be abused -- daily fill-rate of approx 20%, and most fair to poor performing schools NEVER receiving a sub, privatized it, touting the fill rate would be 80+% from day ONE of the new school year. The contractor never achieved higher than 11%, and their replacement company hovers around 16% currently. The District clearly attempted to address academic performance by ensuring the teachers were teaching, but put little thought into the causes of teacher absence, and more troubling chronic absence (low morale, failing health, assault on employees -- even teachers who were attacked bet penalized for calling out!), and clearly didn't work to implement processes and structures to mitigate teacher absence. In the last year, they implemented auto emails from the Superintendent recognizing employees who have not called out for a year, but little else beyond.
So penalizing employees for not showing up to work is not a new thing, and in fact some employers like this school district have no shame when it comes to its punishments.
Even the Sun goes down.
The ACA was a failure. 'Socialism' fails too.
Growing up, in school, I know teachers got x amount of sick days per year. Sure, they'd take them, but I recall an awful amount of times when they work sick and other times sick on a Friday without symptoms the day before. They could also bank them for years and retire earlier. My sister in law works at a hospital and gets so many sick days a year. She takes them like vacation days so she has to work when actually sick. It's fucking annoying. I do not support rolling over unused sick days. It would be better to have an exception program for the odd extended problem like broken bones, surgery, chicken pox, etc.
I worked briefly at Walmart last year after my previous job closed (company filed for bankruptcy); At around the 3rd week in, I had to miss work because my car was struck by a deer (I commute along a 2 lane highway for about half my driving distance per day) and was essentially totaled. They still took off points despite me trying to explain "I cannot get to work because I do not have RELIABLE transportation" to HR. Apparently, failing to secure the use of a relative/friend's car for daily use, while I somehow scramble to find a new car, was my fault. F%^* that scroogely company. They held food drives for their employees rather than give them a slight pay raise.
(I found a more reasonable employer though so i like to think of the whole experience it as a lesson on why Walmart is so reviled by most people, even if we shop there sometimes out of necessity-- that and why a job working in the freezer section will NEVER be taken ever again).
Good. Too many of the coworkers I've had over the years abused them. Sunny days in Seattle result in a lot of "sick" days. It sucks being the only responsible ones.
To be fair to them, they probably just wanted to be away from you for a day.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Calling good policies 'socialism' is very wrong, and the sad part is, that Dems and their supporters are readily doing it it themselves, thus shooting themselves in the foot each time there's an election.
Socialism is an ideology that has been abused to the point, that the term cannot be used any longer, unless the country is some kind of an authoritarian dictatorship and chooses to implement such verbiage, both in policy and rhetoric.
That is why, if you want to win over centrist or sometimes right-leaning people, you have to be a lot more careful about the kind of rhetoric that you'd use in your arguments. This applies to the whole Democrat side, too.