Becks writes:
And as I always have to point out, that final bar showing 10 is for Japan, not America. America has no bar, because Americans, alone in the developed world, aren't guaranteed even one day of paid vacation. And that not only effects the amount of vacation we get (particularly among unskilled workers), but it also effects the workplace culture around using our vacation and sick days. When you -- or many around you -- can't do something, you're more liable to invent reasons why you also shouldn't, which helps explain why folks feel so guilty taking sick days and vacation time.
The New York Times blog has a post up about "presenteeism", people who come into work sick, and how to discourage it. This has always been a problem with places that don't have paid sick leave, but I expect that it's creeping even more into companies that do offer benefits because of the shift from separate vacation and sick leave to "paid time off" banks that combine both. After all, when a person is faced with the calculation of "Do I come in sick and infect my coworkers but save a PTO day so I can go on vacation with my family later this year? Or should I stay home and use a PTO day for the sake of not infecting my coworkers?", they aren't being a completely irrational actor by choosing the former. (I'll leave a point about externalities as an exercise for the reader.)Indeed, they're not even being a mildly irrational actor. If you'd prefer to sniffle your day through work and use a sick day to take a long weekend, then doing so is perfectly rational. That's not an impulse an employer will ever be able to squelch. Additionally, as a friend just noted to me over IM, if you come in when mildly sick (and contagious), you build up lots of credibility for the day when you're really sick and need to stay home for a bit. That's the American way: We have to leverage working through our mild illnesses to feel justified in taking time off for major sickness.You could, of course, change this calculation in the margin if all workers got paid sick days and sufficient vacation leave such that they didn't feel they needed to make a zero sum choice between staying home for a cold and being a good worker, or staying home for a cold and going to Tahiti. This may be a good time to post one of my favorite -- in that it's powerful, rather than makes me happy -- graphs:
And as I always have to point out, that final bar showing 10 is for Japan, not America. America has no bar, because Americans, alone in the developed world, aren't guaranteed even one day of paid vacation. And that not only effects the amount of vacation we get (particularly among unskilled workers), but it also effects the workplace culture around using our vacation and sick days. When you -- or many around you -- can't do something, you're more liable to invent reasons why you also shouldn't, which helps explain why folks feel so guilty taking sick days and vacation time. 
