The young people these days just don't have any work ethic

[JohnsonJones]

I'm a big fan of PTO.

Of course, it's questionable on how much Time off I actually get or not.  In just a few days I am going to take my summer research trip.  In theory I suppose I could continue to research at the university, teach summer classes or even take the summer off!  Instead I generally do research abroad if I can do it and then prepare for research at home and other projects.  I'm on Salary so there's that item.  I generally get to decide my own schedule in working and what is considered time off or not (with University approval...of course).  I'm lucky as many who started later on the Professor track do not have these privileges.

I've noticed the U.S. is particularly hostile (or more hostile) to the idea of worker's rights and in that line, time off for the workers.  It seems detrimental to mental health in many ways.  Guaranteeing woman can have children and have time off to bear and bond with a child seems to be more beneficial to society than giving her a maximum of two weeks off to have the baby and recover...or at times...no time off.  It seems more beneficial to give your workers time off to go to the doctors and maintain their health rather than requiring them to schedule time off to do such things.  By letting them see medical personal to keep up their health it probably helps avoiding health problems in the future.  It seems more beneficial to have workers have more time off or mandated time off where they can do what they desire and recover mentally than making them have fewer PTO or sick days as the US does.

NOW...if you DO what you love (for example, you love history and somehow manage to get paid to research and teach it...)...then PTO may not be as big of a factor.  In fact, you may end up doing the same thing you do at work on your own if you were doing something in that manner. 

I think the young people today work harder than many give them credit.  People tend to think they worked harder than they actually did when they were young.  I see young people doing much more work for far less money than what I've seen over the past few decades.  To me, this upcoming generation is more cognizant of the world around them and what probably is more fair (what they see other countries doing outside of the US) in regards to work-life balance than what prior generations did. 

In addition, there is NO employer loyalty anymore.  Employer's don't seem as loyal to their workforces as they used to be.  Only a few institutions still have employer loyalty (for example, some universities still do...but even then...tenure is a slowly fading idea at some of them, and gaining tenure is harder today then it has ever been in the past).  This young generation sees this.  If an employer is NOT loyal to their employees, firing at a drop of a pin, laying off at the slightest sign of wage increase, etc...then why should an employee have any loyalty to their employer.  This idea is what the younger generation is coming up with. 

There are no pensions, no upward mobility (it is seen sometimes that changing to a different company will net you a better increase in salary and position than sticking with a company...because the company doesn't promote from within), no desire from many US employers today to help out their workers and thus help themselves. 

I don't see it as the new generation being less hardworking, but more being connected with what the world is doing today and more educated on what rights should inherently be granted to them and their relationship with those who wish to employ them.

[Just_A_Guy]

6 hours ago, Godless said:

That's not quite how it works. I can't speak for other states (though my understanding is that we based our bill off of what they're doing), but our plan is paid out by the state and funded by a pool of fees collected from employers, who are allowed to recoup a portion of the fees from employee paychecks. The bill had quite a bit of support from both large and small businesses because research shows that this way of handling family medical leave is less costly to employers than paying for their employees' paid leave directly.

Hmm . . .

The program will operate similarly to unemployment insurance. It will be funded by a new 0.7% payroll tax on employers that will take effect in 2026. Employers can deduct half of their premiums from workers' wages. 

So, half comes from the paying customers, and half comes from the employees themselves?

Business groups fought to block the proposal, warning that it would impose heavy costs and regulatory burdens on employers and aggravate their staffing problems. But it was hailed by supporters who said it would bring equality and fairness to the workplace. . . .

But John Reynolds, state director for the National Federation of Independent Business in Minnesota, called it a “deeply flawed proposal that will cost much more than expected and make it harder for small businesses to keep their doors open.”

Doug Loon, president and CEO of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, said the program could become the largest mandate on employers in state history.

“This massive policy will bring fundamental changes to every employer and employee in the state — from $1.5 billion or more in annual payroll taxes, unwarranted shifts in benefits, to state approved leave for employees," Loon said in a statement.

Sounds like there wasn’t exactly a consensus of ringing endorsement from the business community.

To clarify, I think PTO is great if the employer feels it’s do-able.  But it looks like fundamentally, to the extent that this program works out mathematically to be a “benefit” at all to the employees—the cost is indeed being borne by the consumers.

[Vort]

NATO allies are supposed to pay 2% of their GDP annually to defense. As far as I can tell, only two of the major NATO allies of the US—France and the UK—actually meet this obligation. (As do Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Greece. For the record.) The rest of NATO, including Canada and all of western Europe besides France and the UK, do not. Obviously, the US pumps many billion dollars into this defense network.

Perhaps the US, bending to public pressure, will simply close down its military presence in Europe and let the Europeans take care of themselves. That should free up a few ten billion or so every year for us to use back home. Of course, Europe will have to, you know, defend itself. That might cut into some of those perquisites they enjoy.

The next time your European friends tell you how superior their social(ist) structures are to how Americans live, gently remind them to thank the US taxpayer.

[askandanswer]

4 hours ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

What the Hades is First Nations People Leave?  In my opinion it is another excuse to get out of work. 

I use all of my paid time off and I get plenty of it in my opinion.  Every Federal Holiday plus about about 192 hours annually (about a month off).  My employment is pretty good.

51. First Nations People Leave

51.1 First Nations Employees, other than casual Employees, are entitled to paid leave up to a maximum of five (5) working days, and unpaid leave up to an additional ten (10) working days, per calendar year for the purpose of:

          51.1.1 bereavement leave (in addition to compassionate leave) for an Immediate Family member (this includes traditional kinship relationships of equivalent          significance);

          51.1.2 participating in National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Observance Committee (NAIDOC) activities/events during NAIDOC week;

         51.1.3 fulfilling ceremonial obligations of a traditional or urban nature, which may include cultural events, initiations, birthing’s and naming’s, funerals and smoking or cleansing, sacred site or land ceremonies or other relevant cultural events; and

         51.1.4 other grounds approved by the University. 51.2 First Nations People Leave is not cumulative from year to year.

[NeuroTypical]

13 hours ago, askandanswer said:

First Nations Employees...are entitled to paid leave up to a maximum of five (5) working days...for the purpose of:

Every single white mormon who clicked on that one Family Tree link last month:

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

Pretty cool.

[mikbone]

Private practice is like flying a F-16, you are in control.  You can go as fast or as slow as you want.  You can also deliver ordinance if you so desire.

Being an employed surgeon on the other hand is like flying first class on a 747.  It super comfy but you have absolutely no control.  You are just a person filling a seat along for the ride.

In private practice you have no paid time off.  If you want to take a week off, you lose the production and have to still pay your overhead.  So it feels like it costs you double.  Also no benefits at all.  You pay for everything.  Health care.  IRA.  Malpractice, Insurance, etc.

As an employee I get crazy benefits and 6-8 weeks a year of PTO.  And I don’t have a boss.  My boss is my contract.  

 

[Carborendum]

15 hours ago, mikbone said:

Private practice is like flying a F-16, you are in control.  You can go as fast or as slow as you want.  You can also deliver ordinance if you so desire.

Being an employed surgeon on the other hand is like flying first class on a 747.  It super comfy but you have absolutely no control.  You are just a person filling a seat along for the ride.

In private practice you have no paid time off.  If you want to take a week off, you lose the production and have to still pay your overhead.  So it feels like it costs you double.  Also no benefits at all.  You pay for everything.  Health care.  IRA.  Malpractice, Insurance, etc.

As an employee I get crazy benefits and 6-8 weeks a year of PTO.  And I don’t have a boss.  My boss is my contract.  

There is a lot of give and take.  My situation is a bit different. I'm an independent contractor.  It's different being the only employee than it is to "run your own business" with employees.  In that way, it is something between the employee/boss dichotomy.

As a contractor, there are different pros and cons.

PROS

• I make more per hour than if I were directly employed.
• My schedule is much more flexible.
• I don't have to pay nearly as much in FICA.  I pay about $1,000/yr instead of around $10,000/yr.
• I get paid time-and-a-half for overtime.  This is common for drafters.  But engineers usually get either nothing, or straight time.
• I can work with more than one client at a time.  This ups the total income, but it takes some juggling.
• I don't have to do those stupid yearly evaluations. (Think of De Niro's character in The Intern.)

CONS

• No benefits.  For now that's fine by me.  We're healthy.  We pay for our own services as we need them.  And it is WAY less than insurance + deductibles+copays.
• No 401(k).  While I can still contribute to my IRA, I don't have the company match.  And the contribution limit is lower for IRAs.
• If the market goes down, I'm one of the first to get cut.  This doesn't really happen to me.  I'm not only a multi-faceted engineer, I'm also a specialist in several areas that... well, there aren't too many of my kind around.  I was once laid off from one company, and they called me back in about a month.

There is an interesting psychological twist to the pay gap.  I get paid more per hour which usually more-than-makes-up-for a lack of PTO.  But I still feel the psychological loss of income for those weeks I'm on vacation.  Telling myself that I've worked enough hours to make up for it doesn't help.  So, I have difficulty fully enjoying my vacations.  I keep thinking about the money I could be making.

[Carborendum]

On 6/11/2023 at 9:13 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

To clarify, I think PTO is great if the employer feels it’s do-able.  But it looks like fundamentally, to the extent that this program works out mathematically to be a “benefit” at all to the employees—the cost is indeed being borne by the consumers.

Costs:

Quote

The paid family and medical leave program will allow Minnesota workers up to 12 weeks a year off with partial pay to care for a newborn or a sick family member, and up to 12 weeks to recover from their own serious illness. Benefits will be capped at 20 weeks a year for employees who take advantage of both.

... It will be funded by a new 0.7% payroll tax on employers

I predict

• A mass outflow of large businesses
• A bankruptcy of small to medium businesses.
• One-man or family businesses will be all that remain.

This kind of policy is simply unsustainable.  Governments can do this for longer because they just need to raise taxes or deficit spend.  Businesses can't do that.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Carborendum

[JohnsonJones]

18 hours ago, mikbone said:

Private practice is like flying a F-16, you are in control.  You can go as fast or as slow as you want.  You can also deliver ordinance if you so desire.

Being an employed surgeon on the other hand is like flying first class on a 747.  It super comfy but you have absolutely no control.  You are just a person filling a seat along for the ride.

In private practice you have no paid time off.  If you want to take a week off, you lose the production and have to still pay your overhead.  So it feels like it costs you double.  Also no benefits at all.  You pay for everything.  Health care.  IRA.  Malpractice, Insurance, etc.

As an employee I get crazy benefits and 6-8 weeks a year of PTO.  And I don’t have a boss.  My boss is my contract.  

 

I cannot say I know how an office works for Private Practice for a surgeon or for a doctor, but I know a tiny bit about how a Law Office might go and make parallels.

In Private Practice, when you own your own business, couldn't you either pair with another doctor (or several doctors), hire a Physician's assistant, or hire a Nurse-Practitioner?   In the instance where you take a vacation (or...go to a conference for work or other work related item),  you would then have others that could fill the gaps while you are away, handle emergencies that pop up, and keep the office running while you are away.  You may or may not make money (Depending on how you run the office, or how you situate it to run), or you may have no loss of income in that situation. 

I'm certain Surgeons (or doctors in general) have offices where it is only themselves that are working, but it seems that there would or should be ways to mitigate any losses when you take time off if you organize the office in order to mitigate such circumstances.

 

PS:  On an F16  you are part of the military and I would imagine you go where you are ordered, and if you drop ordinance without the proper authorization you would be in a HEAP of trouble.  You go where you are told to go, and do as you are told to do. 

At least a passenger in First Class can get up and walk around when the pilot puts on the light. 

A Private Pilot (sort of like a Private Practice) on the otherhand can make their own plans about where they will fly, make their own determination when and where.  If they are in business for themselves (have their commercial license) they can do as others in a private business and decide when they are working, what jobs to take...etc...etc...etc. 

I've done a bit of flying and I would say in that parallel, I'd much rather be the private pilot than the military pilot.  The commercial pilot for the airlines on the otherhand...some of them have quite nice hourly pay (though, it doesn't cover their entire workday.  From what I understand they get up and do their flight plans, weather watch, notams, etc all without pay.  They are actually working a bit without pay, it's only when they are actually flying they get paid.  That pay in the air seems nice though.

[Vort]

Quote

ordinance

FTR: "ordnance".

[Just_A_Guy]

1 hour ago, JohnsonJones said:

I cannot say I know how an office works for Private Practice for a surgeon or for a doctor, but I know a tiny bit about how a Law Office might go and make parallels.

In Private Practice, when you own your own business, couldn't you either pair with another doctor (or several doctors), hire a Physician's assistant, or hire a Nurse-Practitioner?   In the instance where you take a vacation (or...go to a conference for work or other work related item),  you would then have others that could fill the gaps while you are away, handle emergencies that pop up, and keep the office running while you are away.  You may or may not make money (Depending on how you run the office, or how you situate it to run), or you may have no loss of income in that situation. 

 

But statistically, women use PTO (and sick days) far more than men do.  Which means that statistically, @mikbone only benefits from such an arrangement if the staff he hires are overwhelmingly male (because for any woman he hires, he’ll wind up covering for her much more often then she covers for him).  But of course, by law he’s not allowed to discriminate in that way.

”Equal pay for equal work” is an important concept.  But the asterisk to it is that in most fields, we’ve got to overcome a lot of culture—and a *huge* amount of evolutionary psychology and physiology—before we even get to truly “equal work”.  (I suspect that recent talk of the “emotional work” done by women, especially in the domestic sphere, is at least in part a reaction to the dawning realization that generally speaking there is in fact not an equality of material productivity between the sexes—at least, not as “productivity” has been traditionally understood.)

Edited June 13, 2023 by Just_A_Guy

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

FTR: "ordnance".

Well, there goes the idea of Guerrilla Proselyting.

[Vort]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Well, there goes the idea of Guerrilla Proselyting.

Gorillas don't use ordinance, but...

[Carborendum]

25 minutes ago, Vort said:

Gorillas don't use ordinance, but...

[Backroads]

On 6/12/2023 at 3:22 PM, mikbone said:

As an employee I get crazy benefits and 6-8 weeks a year of PTO.

I really don't intend this as whining, just more musing on the nature of PTO and what JaG was saying about what employers can even offer on PTO. 

But also on the balance of types of work and employment and any need for time off.

As a teacher I work on a contract with a system number of days for which I am paid. I roll my eyes at being accused of my paid summers and holidays because while you can say whatever you want about my salary and equal comparisons and whatnot, at the end of the day my contract doesn't say a word about paid summer vacation. If you want to get technical, I am unemployed as of Monday. I just happen to anticipate a new contract coming up one of these days.

Okay, I'm descending into potential whining, but it's hard to be expected to feel superior about my technically unpaid summer break when I know a lot of people who are in fact getting a similar amount of time in actual paid vacation.

For what it's worth, I would rather trust a well-rested surgeon with my body parts and I love my summer and winter breaks and figure every job has it trade-offs.

[mikbone]

37 minutes ago, Backroads said:

For what it's worth, I would rather trust a well-rested surgeon with my body parts and I love my summer and winter breaks and figure every job has it trade-offs.

Studies show that overworked surgeons do better then well rested ones…

 

[Backroads]

9 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Studies show that overworked surgeons do better then well rested ones…

 

And now I'm fascinated and want to know more.

[mikbone]

8 minutes ago, Backroads said:

And now I'm fascinated and want to know more.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2016/02/04/397369.htm

There is a difference between a busy surgeon and an 'burntout' surgeon.

Shift change is the most likely time when errors occur.  

You want a surgeon that is well practiced and comfortable doing complex cases.  

Surgeons who need everything just so and need to have their me time are dangerous.

I can perform pretty impressive work with a spork.

I have seen some surgeons throw a hissy fit and cancel a whole day of surgery because thier favorite scrub was not available or a special tool was on backorder.  

 

[Carborendum]

24 minutes ago, mikbone said:

You want a surgeon that is well practiced and comfortable doing complex cases.  

Yup, sounds like me... for engineering work.

24 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Surgeons who need everything just so and need to have their me time are dangerous.

Again, it sounds like me.  (Notice the strikethrough).  For me, this means that I need all the upfront information and a clear directive.  Then leave it to me and I will get it done.

24 minutes ago, mikbone said:

I can perform pretty impressive work with a spork.

Well... with paper and pencil.  But yeah.

24 minutes ago, mikbone said:

I have seen some surgeons throw a hissy fit and cancel a whole day of surgery because thier favorite scrub was not available or a special tool was on backorder.  

That sounds like me too.  Oh, wait, that was a bad thing. 

Yes, sometimes I have problems when the right tools are not available.  It is true that I can get the job done with brute force.  But it will take a couple of days to do something by hand, that which I can do in under an hour with the proper tools.  This is like asking a man to use a sledge hammer to break up a concrete block when we could utilize a jack-hammer to do the same thing much faster and without as much wear & tear on the worker.

Yes, tools matter.  But if I really have to, I can do it by hand.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Carborendum

[Backroads]

4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Yup, sounds like me... for engineering work.

Again, it sounds like me.  (Notice the strikethrough).  For me, this means that I need all the upfront information and a clear directive.  Then leave it to me and I will get it done.

Well... with paper and pencil.  But yeah.

That sounds like me too.  Oh, wait, that was a bad thing. 

Yes, sometimes I have problems when the right tools are not available.  It is true that I can get the job done with brute force.  But it will take a couple of days to do something by hand, that which I can do in under an hour with the proper tools.  This is like asking a man to use a sledge hammer to break up a concrete block when we could utilize a jack-hammer to do the same thing much faster and without as much wear & tear on the worker.

Yes, tools matter.  But if I really have to, I can do it by hand.

This sounds like every engineer I know.

Ever played DnD with an engineer DM?! This is my life to deal with.

[Carborendum]

3 hours ago, Backroads said:

Ever played DnD with an engineer DM?! This is my life to deal with.

I have been a DM because no one else wanted to take the job.  It was ok.  I could run the campaign well.  But I couldn't really come up with an engaging storyline.

I can't think of any time I was a player with an engineer DM.

[LDSGator]

On 6/9/2023 at 11:26 AM, Backroads said:

think in many ways some work places have become too cushy in retaining employees. With the work options so theoretically available these days, that may have some level of necessity, but where does it end?

 

Happy employees generally are more productive then employees who cry every day at their desk. Same with local hobby clubs, churches etc.  I hope it doesn’t end. 
 

This is especially true for volunteer groups and churches the more I think about it. You’ll never please everyone of course. However if you make an environment that’s cold, constantly unpleasant and acrimonious, you have no right to wonder why no one shows up and morale is miserable. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by LDSGator