Thoughts about snow days? (This is about the U.S., but would love to hear how this plays out in other countries)
Back story. I know a person who worked for a private company, but that private company worked out of (rented office space) from a Federal Government owned building. The Federal Government shut down buildings to non-essential employees due to unsafe travel conditions or — a snow day.
My friend could not go to work because the building was closed by the Feds. The Federal employees working in the same building all get paid anyway as it is not their fault their employer told them to stay home (i know this for a fact for salary, not 100% on hourly). But my friend having worked for a private company, was forced to use her PTO to cover this snow day. Which, in my opinion, is disgusting. Not only that, but she was planning on leaving the job to start her own business, so she had just burned up all of her PTO on a vacation, returned to work and gave her resignation notice. Since she didn't have PTO to cover her snow day, they docked a day's wages from her last paycheck.
I looked it up. There is no Federal law on this. It is state-by-state, and from what I can tell, most states allow employers to force you to use PTO. There are so many variables at play with health benefits (don't get me started) and so many other things, but the bottom line is that you, the worker, again is getting screwed. The claim we always hear is that the “entrepreneur” gets paid more because they put in the work and took the risk, well, bad weather sucks, but that should be part of the risk/reward garbage they like to throw around.
IMO: This is bullshit. If you are willing to work, and the only thing stopping you is your boss telling you it is too risky to come to work, then you should get paid.
If my opinion became law, I could see
- companies not shutting down when they should due to weather and making employees drive/work in unsafe conditions
- managers making employees come but not coming in themselves, or getting there when it is convenient for them, but expecting workers to be there “on time.”
- workers refusing to come in and then getting docked/fired/punished in some sense
- managers saying stuff like “It snows in Alaska every day, and they go to work.”
- essential employees resenting employees who don't have to go in (this all ready happens and it annoys me. i get it, and i sympathize with them for having to risk an accident when i dont, but me being on the road with them makes it riskier for the both of us. the fewer people on the road, the safer, and really that goes for any weather condition)
I am curious about other's experience with this or if anyone has information on how this effects my concerns in states where they can't legally make workers use PTO, and I am wondering if we should start to petition Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh and our Reps. Short of my concerns stated above, I think this could be something that could change if campaigned for. The companies will throw a fit because they never want to budge an inch, but really, this isn't that big of an ask.
Everything below this is more of a rant/conceptual of how we really have to reprioritize our lives and how I think conversations that take place on this sub highlights the ugly of our day-to-day grind, it also makes me kind of hopeful knowing that these situations are being brought into the light and people are talking about these things.
The death of the snow day!
This is another thing that has come up over the past two years while working remote. I know this is specific to people who have jobs conducive to remote work.
Even prior to the pandemic, I had a job that I could have totally done from home, but at that time, I didn't mind going to the office, without getting into details, it actually worked for me at that time. Still, they had a policy where after one year of employment, you could potentially get some remote work, one or two days a week based on your job and manager. Before my first year was up, we were expecting bad weather, and my boss told us all to talk our laptops home to work from home if they shut down due to the snow (it was a big institution that does that from time to time).
So
- why can I work from home tomorrow, but not today, or last week, or any other time for the next six months?
- why should I be working when the company told us NOT to come to work?
- what do you think is going on in the first 12 months of my employment that makes me unable to work from home but then magically vanished after 365 days?
As an aside, why do I have to put X years in to get X amount of PTO? Why can't I just have the fucking PTO? Again, this is only to the benefit of employer. There might be some historic thing with unions and how you earn more PTO over time because of value you added to a pension, I am not sure about this, but most jobs aren't union and most people don't have pensions, so…it just forces you to stay at jobs. I have coworkers who have applied to other jobs and gotten offers, but the new employer won't match their current PTO. They have to start from scratch, and there is no way that they are going to do that in their late 40s and 50s. Obviously, if the jobs was shit, they would walk away, but they aren't going to give up weeks of PTO just to do virtually the same job just at another company. Just give us the fucking PTO. We aren't making widgets anymore, and even if we are, just make fewer widgets. If we all just made and expected fewer widgets, it would all equal out in the end anyway.
“Post-pandemic”
Now they are dragging us back into the office, even though they know we can do our jobs from home (you're welcome oil companies), but when it comes to snow days, they are going to expect us to work from home. Never mind the teeth-grinding-twist-yourself-into-a-pretzel-hypocractic-logic of this, but what about people with kids? If the kids have a snow day, I feel like they are now going to be expected to learn from home, but as difficult as that was and continues to be, although, it might be getting easier as time goes on, it is still a struggle and always will be and for what? The learning experience the kids get from home on a snow day most likely won't be as good, only because a ton of variables that have pop up what transitioning from in-person to virtual. Even if the teachers are ready for it, there is only so much they can do. (as a big fan of distance education, i'm not saying in-person education is always higher quality, i'm saying that jumping back from one mode to the other at the whim of weather makes it extremely difficult) Many kids will be distracted by the novelty of the snow. The parents will be half-assing their job because they now have to make sure their kids are paying attention in class and won't be focussed on their work. So why are we even bothering? Just stay home. Stay safe. Deal with whatever snow removal you may have to do and maybe, just maybe, you have a little fun on a “work/school day” — heaven forbid.
I know these are largely prosecco-problems when compared to some working condition in the States, and not to mention other countries, but focusing on how it can be worse is self-defeatist. I don't want to hear how it could be worse. I want to know how can be better. Better, for me, my coworkers, for migrant farm workers, for cobalt miners in the Congo, and for some French school teacher who eats better lunches then I can afford sees more PTO by the age of 35 than I ever will.