The Artist formerly known as Sappho wrote:
In your case Mattus, that the collective suffers and that employment is placed at risk are factual statements that need factual reasons... aka evidence to back them up. Is there any evidence, aside from correlation studies? Can you show me a company that failed because the employees took their yearly allocated sickies? Can you show me a team that is suffering (remembering that to suffer is a physical and emotional condition of significance which doesn't include annoyance) as a result of a team member taking a sickie? If what you claim is true, then surely there would be more discussion of this concern by corporations... because I assure you, most people take their allocated yearly allowance of sickies whether they are sick or not so where is that on going discussion? And by on going discussion, I don't mean such a thing as happened before Australia Day where people take a sickie in order to enjoy a long weekend... I mean on going discussion such as happens now days with bullies, smoking, gambling etc.
It's an amusing rhetorical tool, to tell me what my argument should be and then send me off to look for evidence to support it. Nevertheless I shall play along. My belief is, of course, limited to my own experience, where some dickhead chucking a "sickie" and thus not showing up for an important client event contributed to our losing the client. However, a few minutes of
google based research tells me that my belief is not alone. From a simple HR perspective, the cost of fabricated "sickies" is equivalent to the recent Tsunami in Japan, which devastated countless business and lives.
Now it's your turn. Given that it's against the terms of employment to fake a sickie, can you provide evidence that it is, in fact, harmless?
The second argument presented is that of like for like treatment. I'm not exactly sure of how this applies to a contractual obligation between the employee and the corporation except to say that those who take a sickie are rewarded with a wage for the day off, assuming they have sickies to take and those who don't take a sickie are not rewarded. This can be better understood in terms of redundancy where the person who has saved their sickies loose that entitlement because it is not paid out, as part of the redundancy. There is a sense of injustice in that, don't you think? A decent employee who never takes a sickie is neither punished or rewarded for it when faced with redundancy, but a person notorious for taking their sickies will receive the same redundancy conditions, but has the added benefit of having been paid during their employment for days not worked.
Sure, but if both of us take dodgy sickies, isn't the risk of termination settlements like this increased for everyone? Thus there remains an incentive for me to not take unnecessary leave, in order to better preserve my and everyone else's, employment. I'm also justified in resenting those that do, for abusing a necessary concession which risks my employment.
If this like for like treatment is between employees... then can I point out that colleagues have no authority on the matter of sick day allocation and usage and therefore cannot be seen to be offering or denying like for like behaviour. The suggestion, which is false, is that... if you don't take a sickie, then I won't take a sickie... but how do you know if they are honouring their end of the informal social contract there? You can't... you don't know if the day they had off was a legitimate day or not... you don't know if the medical certificate is valid or not... you don't know even if a medical certificate was lodged or not. And since there is no way of knowing if a breach of that social contract has occurred, then there is a question over the validity of that social contract in the first place.
In this case, opinion of colleagues is formed based on suspicion and a familiarity with other related work ethic characteristics, rather than firm evidence. Social contracts are very frequently based on this level of understanding, rather than certainty.
This book is about practical Stoicism: if you don't put a philosophy into action, what good is it?