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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 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.
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.
Thank goodness they don't have any pesky screening restrictions around spelling and grammar...
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.