The Work Thread

[BloodAngel]

Started a new job making way more and also they have a D and D club that meets at noon once a week. Going to be running a Tales from the Loop game. Life is good that is all!

[Macha]

new chair assembled. Need to tweak the tilting, but other than that, so happy with it.

ETA: I am not sure I am doing this right. But it lifts up super high! LOL .

[Derp]

@macha said in The Work Thread:

new chair assembled. Need to tweak the tilting, but other than that, so happy with it.

Wooooi!

[sahin]

Work has been so hard this week that I've cried.

Last time I had a good cry, it was with my head in the freezer, because it reminded me of being in a walk-in. ANYWAY.

Sales sold, marketing knew, and they released the fucking kraken on the completely unaware support side -- oh, wait. The director knew. But because they're the hands-off and not the old director who everyone thought was 🤬 for micro-managing. At the same time, they are reorganizing the processes for the team so that there can be MORE CALLS and this means all of their busy work slides down the slope. OH JOY. Yes, give me your tedium and you're going to be SO SURPRISED when my productivity plummets. Then, asking for help is as good as talking to a brick wall -- because that wall is just as pitted with impact scars, cracked, and overwhelmed as you are. There's a middle ground there, folks, and that's what I need. It's felt like drowning, and because all of these services are tied into social media -- the idea of mucking around in ANY OF IT outside of work has started to make me feel ill and uneasy. (As a side effect, the got more quiet and would prefer to be withdrawn and in power-saving mode.)

At this point I've applied to more restaurants than I ever did when I was in culinary school -- in an effort to just be back in an industry where clear and concise communication is necessity.

[silverfox]

My principal came to us with a unique proposal this week, and I'm still mulling it over.

***The current situation and the proposal:***

click to show

Current Arrangement:
Our current agreement gives us 11 days off per school year. One of these is automatically donated to our sick leave bank to support teachers who have babies, get sick, family matters, etc. It's a think the union agreed to and it has worked so far. It's not as good as having like, paid maternity leave (especially since K-12 education IS primarily staffed by women...) but it softens the blow.

The other ten days are for staff to use. At the end of the year you have the option of rolling them over (up to 30 days total) or getting paid out over the summer at 40% of your daily rate.

I've always just rolled mine over until last year because I'd finally hit that 30 days maximum I could save up. I figured if life was going to really screw me over I'd need them badly. I liked the support of knowing I had the days vs the immediate pay out.

Proposal:
Still 11 days, with one day going to the sick bank.

What is changing is the payout schedule for unused days. If you choose to roll them over, awesome, good, no payout, just security.

If you don't use any of your days then you get 100% of your daily rate for those 10 days. If you make $150 a day, then you end up with a summer check of $1,500. (Note, this is a made up number for a daily rate, don't come for me on that.)

It drops from there.
9 days - 90%
8 days - 80%
7 days - 70%
6 days - 60 %
5 days - 50%
4 days (or fewer) - 40%

It's clearly there to incentivize people to not take days off. Which I 100000% get. If you're not there SOMEONE still has to take care of your children/class. Right now getting a sub is a joke, and so we've run the school a few days by the skin of our teeth. I've subbed in every level but kinder so far this year and it is HARD on the kids to not have their teacher and be faced with a stranger. The little kids cry (especially if it's a less familiar face like one of our middle school teachers), the middle school kids take advantage (with some suspensions happening after the fact because admin/mental health are also subbing and can't respond BEFORE things become a crisis), and a lot of things just don't get done.

So all in all, it's better for everyone but the person who doesn't take their days if people don't take their sick days. We have a handful of teachers who have NEVER taken a day because they just haven't had the need to do so. They have to take the payout.

That means they've been penalized in the past for not using their days because they're only getting the 40% rate for that day. Using the above metric that means they'd be netting $600 on that summer check.

All in all this seems like a win for everyone? No one loses anything if they take their days, they still get the basement 40% if they have 4 or fewer. Those who don't take their days are then punished less for doing so. I KNOW it will benefit me - I only intend to take off one day this year if/when my grandfather passes (It's time. I can't be sad about it because he's so ready to go.)

I can't think of a single reason why it's going to be a bad policy change if approved by the district/state (we're a sub-set type of school that sits midway between charter and neighborhood school and so our leading plan has to be approved at the state level).

And yet....

It's still is somehow rubbing it wrong that we are asking people not to use their sick days. It's their sick days. Haven't we as a society moved towards encouraging people to use their days? Where does this policy sit in relationship to that movement?

TLDR - The district is proposing a change to how unused sick days are paid out and while it sounds good on the surface I'm still left with a rub the wrong way and I can't pin down why it rubs me wrong (especially since I'm going to benefit from the change.)

[Roz]

@silverfox I think it's very correct to be rubbed the wrong way by policies that penalize taking PTO. It may be framed as a BONUS for NOT taking PTO, but just reverse that: it penalizes taking more PTO. This especially stands out to me that everyone is already losing a day to a communal bank of extra time, instead of the employer in the situation just being decent about extenuating life circumstances.

I'm at a company now where my boss strongly encourages to take the PTO we have available to us, stressing that it's part of our overall compensation. That's, IMO, the healthiest way it should be treated. As something you're expected to take.

[mietze]

The workplace in the US heavily /relies/ on people not taking any time off, either by minimizing as much as possible paid leave, utilizing firing for missing more than 3 days or less for illness or other reason, and by having minimal staffing so that any loss is a major hardship for coworkers and people know it.

The only place I have ever been encouraged to use the (ample) time off provided in like 30 years of working has been when I worked at the bank, because it's a federal requirement that you're out of the system for 5 consecutive business days once ever year, and they grant a shitload of other leave too.

Everywhere else I've worked there was pressure internal and external to never miss a day. Especially in service and early childhood education.

[Pyrephox]

Also, in our current situation, you do not want to be incentivizing people to come to work sick. Particularly in a school environment, which is already a huge vector for disease.

[faraday]

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

Haven't we as a society moved towards encouraging people to use their days? Where does this policy sit in relationship to that movement?

Given that hospital staff are being told to come to work even when covid-positive, and people in other fields are being given ultimatums like "you get 5 days of quarantine, better be back in the office on day 6 or you're fired", I think we're so far past that movement you can't even see it from here.

I really don't get it. Hospitals everywhere are swamped. My kid had HALF their teachers out sick last week. More than 2000 --- TWO THOUSAND -- people are dying each day from covid. And yet half the dang country wants to pretend like the pandemic is over. It utterly baffles me.

[Pyrephox]

@faraday The realities of a pandemic and keeping people alive in a pandemic are inconvenient to the desires of late stage capitalism, so the wealthy class is more than happy to sacrifice thousands of people a day as long as their short-term profits don't take a hit that makes stock prices drop.

[silverfox]

I'm not going to lie... I would fight tooth and nail to not go back to remote school. I'm more afraid, at this point, of my middle school students committing suicide, or being recruited into a gang and ending up in prison. (Both things that happened while remote...)

My heart aches for those dying and sick. ACHES.

I still wouldn't go back remote.

[mietze]

@pyrephox That is exactly what is happening in every school right now, pretty much. And every daycare, though.

[faraday]

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

I still wouldn't go back remote.

That's the thing, though. "Shut everything back down and go remote" and "pretend the pandemic is over while 2k people are dying each day" are not the only two options that exist. Yet our polarized society acts as though they are. It drives me freaking insane.

Not saying you were doing that specifically, it's just a general rant.

[silverfox]

It is definitely the thing I get yelled at me whenever I suggest to one side that we stay open.

[Too Old For This]

I think there are certain families and households that need the ability to work/school remote. I also think there are certain families and households that need the ability to be on location for work/school. And I feel like there should be some means of compromising towards a solution for both. NO solution is going to be perfect. There will always be someone who gets left behind or screwed over or whatever. It's going to happen. But by either side ignoring the needs of the other, we're causing more problems than we're solving.

Me and mine are high risk, and it's been shown that the vaccine isn't completely effective from preventing contracting COVID. With the high rates of contraction right now, me and mine need the ability to work/school from home to safeguard our own health. Both physical and mental. Others need to be able to be on location for their health, physical or mental or both.

There NEEDS to be compromise in there. Somewhere.

[Ganymede]

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

TLDR - The district is proposing a change to how unused sick days are paid out and while it sounds good on the surface I'm still left with a rub the wrong way and I can't pin down why it rubs me wrong (especially since I'm going to benefit from the change.)

It probably rubs you the wrong way because it does two things simultaneously: (1) forces you to take time off; or (2) get penalized for it.

While it seems punitive from the workers' end, it is a problem all over the public sector in Ohio that can break any public entity's budget. If the employees are allowed to roll over their PTO year after year, it is not unreasonable for some employees to have at the end of their tenure around 200 days. Because these are public benefits, they cannot be taken away from you under Ohio law, so the employer has to pay you PTO when you leave employment. So if you have an unexpected number of folks retiring all at one time, your budget takes a massive hit.

This is a problem because most public entities cannot or will not save their money in a public account to pay out PTO. School boards feasibly can do this, but if they start saving an awful lot of money there will be a public clamor to reduce taxes or, when an increase in a levy arises, deny necessary increases in revenue. Other public bodies beholden to higher governments may see their annual budgets cut if they continue to save up public funds even though this is a wise thing to do from an economic perspective. And this is because -- holy shit who knew? -- the vast majority of public officials do not have appreciable studies in economics and public finance courses are notoriously weighted towards short-term budgeting.

Look, it sucks. It really does. Now that I am in administration? It doubly-sucks.

[Derp]

@ganymede said in The Work Thread:

Because these are public benefits, they cannot be taken away from you under Ohio law, so the employer has to pay you PTO when you leave employment.

Ours gets capped at 270 hours and only if you leave voluntarily.

Man.

I need to go work for Ohio, clearly.

[Ganymede]

@derp

Most places have a cap. I'm just explaining why one exists.

[Sunny]

Anything that encourages people to work sick during a pandemic is a bad idea, leaving aside all of the other issues with such a policy. Rewarding people with financial value if they don't use days is straight up encouraging people to work sick.

[Ganymede]

@sunny said in The Work Thread:

Rewarding people with financial value if they don't use days is straight up encouraging people to work sick.

My reading of the original post is that this is a discussion on PTO, rather than sick leave. In Ohio, these are separate kinds of leave, but both are compensable in the public sector.