Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

RenegadeMonster said:
Just heard an awful thing someone's company is doing. Business is down because of COVID-19, so the business has mandated people use all but 10 hours of their PTO this summer while things are slow. They then have to use all their remaining PTO and new PTO accrued by the end of the year.

Now that people have used up their PTO, the business has changed it's covid policies. Instead of being eligible for short term disability / leave with subsidized pay if you test positive for Covid-19, you are required to use your PTO. If you are out of PTO, well too bad. Tough Luck. No pay, and your job might be in jeopardy.

Oh, and by the way, management at this company is insisting that they are not a work from home company. Working from home has no longer been tolerated since the stay at home order has been lifted. Even though 95% of the people in this office could work from home, working from home is not an option any longer, and will not be an option if they are in quarantine.

How fucked up is that.
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Link?
 
RenegadeMonster said:
I believe the fear with laying the people off is they would lose talent that is highly specific to the job they do. And by the way, this company did layoff around 30% of their employees this past April already. The use the PTO was for remaining employees after layoffs to avoid more layoffs.

Asking people to use PTO when slow is not uncommon when it comes to business management, but is shitty nonetheless.

They look at people sitting idle as losing money. The PTO is already owned to the employees, so effectively they are telling their employees we don't have enough work for you, our bad, use our PTO so we don't have to pay you.

They are not expecting more work later that would prevent people from taking PTO. They just don't want to pay people to work when they don't have enough work available.
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The only way it makes sense to me is if they temporarily shut down completely and make people take PTO instead of giving them some kind of suspended operations pay.

Requiring them to take it within a time allotment doesn't save the company any money if they plan on keeping the employee.

I guess you could say that the company could look at it as saving money if they don't have the work when they make them take it, but want them for work later before they don't need them again and then lay them off (if MA requires them to pay out all unused PTO when they lay them off). But it doesn't really work if they don't want to lay off the employee.

If they're keeping the employee, they are losing the same amount of money if the employee is doing nothing at work or using PTO. They're just ensuring they don't take intentional vacation at a different time, which ostensibly by your description would be the same value to the company since there won't be enough work then either.

The alternative seems to be to lay off more people, so I'm struggling to see the motive behind them jerking them around with PTO, which is weird and bad for morale, instead of just firing them. And what's the better alternative for the employees, paying them to not work indefinitely until the company goes bankrupt?

Sorry, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just thinking out loud because it doesn't make any sense to me and I want to understand it.
 
dhodo said:
The only way it makes sense to me is if they temporarily shut down completely and make people take PTO instead of giving them some kind of suspended operations pay.

Requiring them to take it within a time allotment doesn't save the company any money if they plan on keeping the employee. I guess you could say that the company could look at it as saving money if they don't have the work when they make them take it, but want them for work later before they don't need them again and then lay them off (if MA requires them to pay out all unused PTO when they lay them off). But it doesn't really work if they don't want to lay off the employee. If they're keeping the employee, they are losing the same amount of money if the employee is doing nothing at work or using PTO. They're just ensuring they don't take intentional vacation at a different time, which ostensibly by your description would be the same value to the company since there won't be enough work then either. The alternative seems to be to lay off more people, so I'm struggling to see the motive behind them jerking them around with PTO, which is weird and bad for morale, instead of just firing them. And what's the better outcome for the employees, paying them to not work indefinitely until the company goes bankrupt?

Sorry, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just thinking out loud because it doesn't make any sense to me and I want to understand it.
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I don't think the company can just shut down in MA and say use your PTO. I believe they would have to pay out unused PTO and have their employees be eligible for Unemployment. Also people have different amounts of PTO.

Their mindset is there is some work, so we don't want to shut down fully. We just want to up the amount of PTO being taken to offset people sittle idle. PTO must always be paid out in MA. So whether they use it now when not busy, later or when their job ends. The company is banking on that work will start to pick back up. So hopefully they will be closer to 100% utilization of their employees later. And that is how they save money. They will have increased productivity later or at least hopes of it. That PTO needs to be paid out at some point in time, and it's more beneficial to the company for it to be used when employee utilization is down and get it out of the way now. And that's why businesses make these decisions to jerk around PTO.

Hope that helps explain the mind set as too why businesses make these kinds of decisions.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
I don't think the company can just shut down in MA and say use your PTO. I believe they would have to pay out unused PTO and have their employees be eligible for Unemployment. Also people have different amounts of PTO.

Their mindset is there is some work, so we don't want to shut down fully. We just want to up the amount of PTO being taken to offset people sittle idle. PTO must always be paid out in MA. So whether they use it now when not busy, later or when their job ends. The company is banking on that work will start to pick back up. So hopefully they will be closer to 100% utilization of their employees later. And that is how they save money. They will have increased productivity later or at least hopes of it. That PTO needs to be paid out at some point in time, and it's more beneficial to the company for it to be used when employee utilization is down and get it out of the way now. And that's why businesses make these decisions to jerk around PTO.

Hope that helps explain the mind set as too why businesses make these kinds of decisions.
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You may have misunderstood what I meant by shutdown. I meant temporarily cease operations and then start up again in a couple weeks or so. My reference is manufacturing and the company that I work for is nice enough to pay us out of a different bucket that doesn't affect our PTO when this occurs. I have heard that some companies give the option of PTO and if you don't have enough, do not pay. That may depend on state law and almost certainly on union vs non-union.

If you didn't misinderstand, that may be right, I'm not sure what the state laws say. Not sure if it depends on length of furlough or not, but yeah it seems like if they didn't have PTO it would be like a furlough and they should be eligible for unemployment. I don't think all states require PTO payout.
 
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According to this site, PTO is not guaranteed anywhere unless it's in your contract. Sick time is in some states.

I have accrued vacation time/sick time/personal leave days that I will not use before leaving my company. Is the company required to pay me for that time?
It depends on your employer and where you live. 24 states—Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (after one year of employment), Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming—and the District of Columbia have laws regarding payment of accrued vacation time. However, in those states, you are only given a legal right to challenge an employer over unpaid accrued vacation time in your final paycheck if the employer has promised payment of unpaid accrued vacation time in your final paycheck. In the rest of the states, there is no state law that requires your employer to pay you for accrued vacation leave, although your employer may do so voluntarily, or may have to do so if required by a policy or contract.

Unless required to do so under an employment contract, collective bargaining agreement, or other legally binding agreement, an employer is not required to pay employees for accrued sick time or personal leave when they leave their employment. In this respect, accrued sick time is unlike accrued vacation time which, in some states, must be paid as part of an employee's final paycheck. Some employers do pay employees for unused sick time, possibly as an incentive for employees to not misuse sick leave. However, this practice is generally completely voluntary, unless required by a contract as discussed above.
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www.workplacefairness.org

Final Pay: Getting Your Last Paycheck | Workplace Fairness

Final Pay: Getting Your Last Paycheck Getting your final paycheck and being paid everything you are owed can be a tricky situation. What do you do with your accrued vacation days? What if your former employer doesn’t want to pay? Do you get paid during your two-week notice? This page can help...
www.workplacefairness.org www.workplacefairness.org
 
dhodo said:
According to this site, PTO is not guaranteed anywhere unless it's in your contract. Sick time is in some states.



www.workplacefairness.org

Final Pay: Getting Your Last Paycheck | Workplace Fairness

Final Pay: Getting Your Last Paycheck Getting your final paycheck and being paid everything you are owed can be a tricky situation. What do you do with your accrued vacation days? What if your former employer doesn’t want to pay? Do you get paid during your two-week notice? This page can help...
www.workplacefairness.org www.workplacefairness.org
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That all is true for manufacturing. But corporate office jobs and office jobs for service / retail jobs generally don't shut down for a week or 2 if things are slow. When it comes to manufacturing, you absolutely wouldn't see businesses asking employees to use PTO instead of shutting down. But this does happen in the corporate office space.

I think we are just both looking at it from a different industry perspective. And my focused was more on the logic of explaining the mindset of why they would make this decision verses explaining the industries where these types of decisions actually happen.
 
Got an Emergency Alert late yesterday on my phone about an increase in new cases seen in my area. Also got confirmation that my company will be working remotely through at least sometime next year now.

Looking at the state days, Salem is now Red. Haven't heard why as of yet, but Halloween tourism has started so there is that.

There are also a few other Boston area towns that went red in the last week. I know one of those towns has an outbreak cluster tracked back to a house party. The majority of the party goers, 30+ have tested positive.

Meanwhile, I texted my father back yesterday after he asked how I'm doing and give him an update on COVID in my area and that I'll be working remotely for the atleast the rest of the year. And this is what his reply was:

Getting close to the election. They're going to run up the numbers to try to control the virus scare narrative. It's all they got to try to prevent President Trump from winning. From now to the election things are going to get busy and Interesting. Don't be surprised when shit happens, just stay safe and out of the way.

They don't care who they hurt. It's about control of the narrative, control of the people and removing Trump at all costs.

This shit will continue till the election is over. It's all about stopping Trump from winning a second term despite the harm or costs to anyone.
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RenegadeMonster said:
Got an Emergency Alert late yesterday on my phone about an increase in new cases seen in my area. Also got confirmation that my company will be working remotely through at least sometime next year now.

Looking at the state days, Salem is now Red. Haven't heard why as of yet, but Halloween tourism has started so there is that.

There are also a few other Boston area towns that went red in the last week. I know one of those towns has an outbreak cluster tracked back to a house party. The majority of the party goers, 30+ have tested positive.

Meanwhile, I texted my father back yesterday after he asked how I'm doing and give him an update on COVID in my area and that I'll be working remotely for the atleast the rest of the year. And this is what his reply was:
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Man I can't believe people think that way.

What do you think the rationale will be if Trump loses and the virus numbers remain elevated?

Good for you for taking this seriously despite your family. It must be pretty hard honestly. I don't know how I'd handle it.
 
botherly said:
Man I can't believe people think that way.

What do you think the rationale will be if Trump loses and the virus numbers remain elevated?

Good for you for taking this seriously despite your family. It must be pretty hard honestly. I don't know how I'd handle it.
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I think the issue is they aren't "thinking" about it, at least not in a critical sense. They are just believing these things because they want to.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Or they have been brainwashed by QAnon
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For sure. I was trying to kind of include that in the "want to" since I don't really understand how someone could subscribe to that who didn't inherently want it to be true. But I suppose believing in cults and the like is a little more complicated than that.
 
Apparently contact tracing isn't working in the United States. Who didn't see that one coming

There are reports out of PA and NJ that more than 50% of the people contact tracers contact refuse to cooperate. They don't want to talk to the contact tracers let alone tell them any personal information such as where they have been and who they may have been in contact with.

Their rights, their privacy, they don't want the government tracking them.

That's scary when you think about it. They test positive for COVID-19. Contact tracing staff reach out so they know where that person has been and who they have been in contact with to try to mitigate spread. And people are refusing to cooperate with them.
 
Northeastern University in Boston may be expelling several students and rescinding their admission.

Students returning to campus had to sign a terms and conditions contract that included rules that stated no parties because of covid and social distancing.

A student on Instagram conducted a poll asking incoming freshmen if they plan to party despite restrictions.

The majority of freshmen who participated in the poll answered "Yes".

A student journalist saw the poll, took a screenshot and wrote an article about it.

North Eastern has reached out to every student that had answered yes to the poll. North Eastern is going over their terms and conditions again with these students and making sure they agree with the rules. If they don't, they will not be able to attend Northeastern Next week. If they do agree, and then found to attend a party they will be immediately expelled.

Students are accusing the student journalist for leaking their names and receiving threats. Both Northeastern and the student journalist say that's not true. The names of who answered yes to the poll were handed over by the student who posted the poll.
 
Just heard an update to the story on the 9:00am news hour.

There were a total of 115 students who responded with yes on the poll on Instagram. Northeastern has reached out to all 115 students.
 
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