Comment by aeternum
3 days ago
Sad.
And perhaps a controversial take but consider the counterfactual: Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave? Get a bad review or put on a PIP? It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
In civilized countries it is illegal to fire someone on sick leave, and I highly doubt you’d get a permit to fire someone who just got back from sick leave.
> It's already becoming a common strategy
I've taken mental health leave (not due to a PIP) and my productivity before and after was significantly different. It was great for my employer that I took it. I'm quite sure I would've eventually ended up with a PIP if I hadn't taken it sooner myself, and the best remedy on a PIP would have been to take mental health leave. Not as a strategy as such, but literally because it would have been the best solution (and I think the only one).
Yes, exactly. Taking mental health leave should be seen as a positive step: an opportunity to overcome whatever difficulties you've been facing, leading to - amongst many other benefits - better performance at work.
Mental health problems are tricky; they tend to creep up on us gradually, and often some form of external trigger is needed in order to prompt us to seek help. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that an employee in receipt of a PIP might take mental health leave as part of a genuine effort to improve their situation.
gp's cynical "counterfactual" suggests that they view PIPs as being purely a sham, intended to always result in dismissal rather than improved performance. Now, that might occasionally be true - but we should be blaming the abusive employer (who is likely acting outside the law) in that situation, not the employee.
> Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
It's not legal to fire an employee on a sick leave in our country. They have to come back to work and then you can fire them. The employer is not paying their wage during the sick leave anyway, they get money from the social and health insurances. So there is very little downside for the company to keeping the employee employed. And if they employee is somehow faking it, that's an issue to check for the insurance companies.
> It's already becoming a common strategy to immediately take mental health/sick leave.
Maybe the companies should ask themselves very hard why this is happening.
Yes. This is already the case in the E.U. and Australia.
Depending on the nature of the leave, this could've also been unlawful in the U.S. due to the Family Leave Act.
Here's another controversial take: as long as healthcare is tied to employment, companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice. If they suck at their job, find them another one at the company -- there has to be something they can do in a company of 5k employees.
On the other hand, it may end up the other way: pressure you or bully you into quitting yourself. Here in Spain it happens sometimes: firing you is expensive and they don't want you around for whatever issue, so they'll try to find any justification to fire you, or just pressure you in some way on another to make you miserable enough to quit. No doubt that would happen in the US.
In the United States, that's known as constructive dismissal or discharge.
https://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/eta/warn/glossary.asp?p=constr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
This can easily backfire on the employer with discrimination, hostile workplace, and a variation on wrongful dismissal lawsuits.
From Wikipedia:
It would take significant change to multiple parts of federal legislation and that in many states with additional worker protection laws.
For example, in California ... https://workplacerightslaw.com/library/retaliation/construct...
this is too radical even for china or like good ol USSR… damn dude :)
"as long as healthcare is tied to employment" makes it barely radical at all.
11 replies →
Sounds like the kind of thing a union or works counsil could help with: enforcing a fair policy. That and revisiting the concept of at-will employment.
Better way to look at it: why are people so afraid of losing their job, and how do we reasonably remove the fear of losing one? Denmark may provide some good guidance here, as they have a good balance between social welfare and protections and fostering a robust business environment
I suspect a major way for the U.S. would be the one mentioned in the article: make it so that losing your job doesn't mean losing your health insurance. That's a major additional stressor, particularly if someone loses their job because of an illness.
Of course, there's about a negative one thousand percent chance of something like that passing in the current political climate.
If neither option satisfies, we must go up the stack. There is something seriously wrong with a society that drives educated, productive adults to suicide.
The US is somewhere in the middle, right there with some European countries. It's hard to say what drives people over the edge. Surprisingly Uruguay is high up there but Uganda, Ghana and Colombia are low.
Yes. This is The Family and Medical Leave Act.
> An employer is prohibited from discriminating or retaliating against an employee or prospective employee for having exercised or attempted to exercise any FMLA right.
You can fire someone after they come back but you will need to show receipts. Your employer also doesn't pay you when you take that leave so it would be a strange way to game the system.
I know people who upon getting put into a PIP took a mental health leave as it took them over the PIP time horizon. The mileage you get from this will vary on organization —some won’t want the reputational hit, others won’t care though.
There will always be people who abuse the system, no matter what system you have.
The solution is not to burn down all systems and just wild west everything. No. The solution is to anticipate the fraud, and build it into your margins and planning. Recognize it will always happen. And, in fact, the optimal amount of fraud is never zero. Because preventing fraud, too, has a cost, and it grows exponentially.
>Should it be illegal to fire employees that recent took mental health leave?
Yes, at least for companies the size of MongoDB
Didn't need much ruminating to come to that answer, but I lack the sociopathic behaviors necessary to run a corporation in the American legal environment.
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