I get this feeling a lot. For example the UK typically has unlimited paid sick days for salaried jobs, while I have heard of US employees pooling together and "donating" sick days to someone. The UK has a ton of benefits for the sick, unemployed, single mothers, carers etc. in the US I am sure those exist but I get the sense that charity is supposed to play more of a role.
FYI it’s not common to allow sick days to be transferable.
TBH I think in the US it’s more than anything about how much more competitive industries here are vs in the UK. If X company feels it’s worth the extra cost by allowing unlimited PTO and 2 years of parental leave, etc. the worry is that X will be trounced by Y Company, who is ruthless enough to not offer those things and as such has much cheaper labor costs.
If you take an industry like retail, those companies have a point - Walmart and Amazon offer low benefits compared to what companies once offered. Their lower prices are part of how they killed off most of the department stores and put the rest on life support.
And if you think about a highly paid job, even though our fringe benefits suck compared to Europe style, my impression is that US salaries are higher for equivalent jobs, enough that it makes up for it. So we value the money more than we would the benefits, apparently. Only problem is you can’t use all that money to buy more time with your family (except for by taking breaks between jobs, if you’re good at saving!)
From the summary of the data[1] being relied upon in that report:
> The number of people economically inactive because of long-term sickness has risen to over 2.5 million people, an increase of over 400,000 since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
> Over 1.35 million (53%) of those inactive because of long-term sickness reported that they had depression, bad nerves or anxiety in Quarter 1 2023, with the majority (over 1 million) reporting it as a secondary health condition rather than their main one.
Bad nerves and anxiety could be a reason for a tiny number of people, but those numbers are huge, and if you think I'm lacking compassion for this, hearing what whistleblowers say regarding the way assessments are done[2] may be relevant:
> Sickness benefit assessments via telephone (rather than in-person visit) are now routine and it's not always necessary to provide proof of a sick note. In the film, Michael Houston, a former assessor, is asked how well it's possible to discern, over the phone, if someone should qualify for full sickness benefit. "Not very," he replied, "which is one of the things that ethically and morally I didn't really feel comfortable with."
That's not even the half of it, and that website has stories of people trapped in the system.
I mean your employment can't technically be terminated because you are taking sick days, unless it's whatever qualifies as long term illness (18 or 28 weeks I forget).
Technically they are not obligated to continue to pay you and the govt sick pay is like 100 quid per week.
in the us they can fire you the day you don't show up
