[DRAFT] Implementation of Reasonable Work Leave

[Cosmosplosion]

Hello, as I have requested the current version of this legislation, entitled "On The Health And Financial Well-being Of Workers" to be voted down or repealed, I would like to immediately begin work on a better version, as this is an important right that workers deserve.

Implementation of Reasonable Work Leave

Category: Regulation - Area: Labour Rights

Acknowledging the importance of workers throughout the universes and the success of worker-related resolutions in the past,

Assessing the situation and understanding that while we have made great progress on the area of workers’ rights, there is still more to be done,

Furthermore, while this Assembly has done a great deal of work in relation to contagious disease, workers are often neglected when discussing health,

Recognizing that in some instances, workers who have contracted an infectious disease will return to their workplace, due to financial needs and societal expectations,

Also supporting workers in their life experiences, such as the arrival of offspring or death of family members and believing workers should be allowed to celebrate, grieve, and grow closer to others,

Hereby,

Defines “reasonable work leave”, for the purposes of this resolution, as a specified time period that an individual is not required to fulfill their work responsibilities in any capacity while receiving compensation equal to their expected wage during this time period,

Establishes four types of reasonable work leave,

1. Sick Leave - a worker is permitted one-eighth of a calendar year or local equivalent of reasonable work leave in the event they are demonstrating symptoms of sickness, they are at risk of spreading a contagious disease, they are suffering from a chronic illness, or are seeking treatment for a sickness or disease,

2. Bereavement - a worker is permitted one-twenty-sixth of a calendar year or local equivalent of reasonable work leave in the event a significant-other, parent, child, or sibling passes away, and may repeat this in the event of additional fatalities,

3. Parental Leave - a worker is permitted a full calendar year or local equivalent of reasonable work leave in the event they or their significant other produces offspring,

4. Personal Leave - a worker is permitted one-thirteenth of a calendar year or local equivalent of reasonable work leave for any reason,

Allows governments to determine who the burden of payment of wages falls on for salaried and hourly workers, as well as commission-based employment,

Necessitates commision-based employees receive compensation equal to their average wages since the beginning of the calendar year or local equivalent, or since they began working for their current employer, whichever is most recent,

Mandates that either governments or businesses, or a combination or both, must pay the wages of salaried, hourly, and commission-based employees, as determined by national legislation,

Requires governments to fulfill the requirements of this resolution for freelance workers, artists, self-employed, and other types of employment in which a worker is not salaried or hourly,

Further allows governments to allow higher amounts of reasonable work leave in the categories listed, as well as establish other forms of reasonable work leave as they deem necessary,

Forbids employers, including government agencies, from retaliating against workers for use of reasonable work leave.

[Tinhampton]

SUPPORT

Also, please be consistent as to whether or not you italicise the first words of your sentences.

Suggestion for rewording the final clause: "Forbids employers, including government agencies, from retaliating against workers for use of reasonable work leave."

[Cosmosplosion]

SUPPORT

Also, please be consistent as to whether or not you italicise the first words of your sentences.

Suggestion for rewording the final clause: "Forbids employers, including government agencies, from retaliating against workers for use of reasonable work leave."

Updated accordingly.

[Morover]

"Several concerns, ambassador, following a brief readthrough. Firstly, the language used in the four different types of work leave uses the words "up to..." which is misleading to me, despite the clarification given in clause five. Some sort of remedy would be nice, if not necessary. Furthermore, while not aware of the international standard on the subject, we fear that the definition of parental leave in this draft completely overlooks potential adoptees or having a child via surrogate, which still would necessitate time off. This would also be easily exploitable by surrogates, who, while deserving of time off to recover, neither them nor their partner need a full calendar year off - not to the same extent of the birth mother or father."

"Additionally, we remain concerned about the specific numbers used in the times used in the establishment of the work leave - is it not better suited to simply put the reason the numbers are there as opposed to the numbers themselves, so as to be more suitable to the wide variety of nations under the jurisdiction of the World Assembly?"

"Also, before I quite cede my time, I'd like to point out that, in spite of the establishment of several types of reasonable work leave, there is no mandate that governments actually uphold the leaves for salaried or hourly workers. There is merely a mandate that the government decides who pays, not that they actually need to pay. In a similar vein, I'd prefer an assurance that governments cannot force the burden to fall onto the actual employee themselves."

[Araraukar]

OOC: Sick leave should definitely have the requirement of having said sick leave been mandated by a healthcare professional, beyond the first few days (and likely leaving it up to the employer to decide how many days, because it's worse if you work with food and show up with sniffles than if you work from home via Internet). And not have such a tight limit to it. You might break your leg, and work in construction, which means you're going to have to be away from work for several months to allow for the bone to heal and then the physical therapy necessary to build up the limb's strength and mobility again, which might exceed the limit you have there.

[Imperium Anglorum]

I concur with Ara.

[Araraukar]

OOC: Another thing that should totally be added, would be something to the effect of the duration of leave not exceeding that of preagreed or expected length of employment. Like, if you're only hired to wait the tables for the 2 months of tourist season, and your partner has a baby, your employer shouldn't pay you (why is the non-baby-birthing parent given time off anyway?) for a whole year, when they hired you for only one sixth of it. Or if you were hired on a fishing ship "until the end of the fishing season", which depends on how much all the boats in the fleet have caught in total (to not exceed the quotas), you shouldn't continue be getting paid for being on sick leave after the season has ended.

And similar adjustments, because at some point there's going to come the point where the employer has the right to ask "why are we employing you again?", if you don't show up for work for years (at least RL humans can have a baby per year).

Oh and ALL of these should have the qualifier of "employer must be informed immediately, and if you just don't show up for work without letting them know or without producing any kind of proof (death/birth certificates/doctor's orders/whatnot), your employment can be terminated as per the rules of your contract" or something like that. Because you can't just decide to stay at home because you have athlete's foot and cba go get any treatment for it (despite your workplace being one where you're expected to keep shoes on at all times anyway) because it lets you just stay home and watch the Game of Thrones TV all day long for howeverlong you like. Because, you know, athlete's foot (dermal fungus) is contagious.

Also, is the "any reason" leave just "didn't feel like working today, sorry!" or does it have to be one of the reasons above it (working as an extension to them), or annual holiday or what?

[Cosmosplosion]

OOC: Bumping this to the top, as I think it is relatively close to being ready for re-submission. Once again, all feedback is appreciated.

[The New Nordic Union]

OOC: Bumping this to the top, as I think it is relatively close to being ready for re-submission. Once again, all feedback is appreciated.

2. Bereavement - a worker is permitted one-twenty-sixth of a calendar year or local equivalent of reasonable work leave in the event a parent, child, or sibling passes away, and may repeat this in the event of additional fatalities,

OOC: Not for spouses? I mean, nations are allowed to provide this, as well, but I'd say people are generally closer to their spouses than their siblings, so including the latter but not the former seems off.

[Araraukar]

OOC: Another thing that should totally be added, would be something to the effect of the duration of leave not exceeding that of preagreed or expected length of employment. Like, if you're only hired to wait the tables for the 2 months of tourist season, and your partner has a baby, your employer shouldn't pay you (why is the non-baby-birthing parent given time off anyway?) for a whole year, when they hired you for only one sixth of it. Or if you were hired on a fishing ship "until the end of the fishing season", which depends on how much all the boats in the fleet have caught in total (to not exceed the quotas), you shouldn't continue be getting paid for being on sick leave after the season has ended.

And similar adjustments, because at some point there's going to come the point where the employer has the right to ask "why are we employing you again?", if you don't show up for work for years (at least RL humans can have a baby per year).

Oh and ALL of these should have the qualifier of "employer must be informed immediately, and if you just don't show up for work without letting them know or without producing any kind of proof (death/birth certificates/doctor's orders/whatnot), your employment can be terminated as per the rules of your contract" or something like that. Because you can't just decide to stay at home because you have athlete's foot and cba go get any treatment for it (despite your workplace being one where you're expected to keep shoes on at all times anyway) because it lets you just stay home and watch the Game of Thrones TV all day long for howeverlong you like. Because, you know, athlete's foot (dermal fungus) is contagious.

Also, is the "any reason" leave just "didn't feel like working today, sorry!" or does it have to be one of the reasons above it (working as an extension to them), or annual holiday or what?

OOC: These haven't been addressed or fixed.

And some additional ones I noticed:

Necessitates commision-based employees receive compensation equal to their average wages since the beginning of the calendar year or local equivalent, or since they began working for their current employer, whichever is most recent,

Why? A commission is based for work completed, after the work has been completed, usually within a time calculated to be reasonable. If the worker fails to fulfill their side of the contract (doing the job they were commissioned to do), why should the employer pay them anything?

Requires governments to fulfill the requirements of this resolution for freelance workers, artists, self-employed, and other types of employment in which a worker is not salaried or hourly,

Such people, when they can't work, are generally known as "unemployed", so if you want to require unemployed people to be paid wages, you have a whole 'nother muddle in your hands.

[Cosmosplosion]

OOC: These haven't been addressed or fixed.

Generally, because I don't believe your suggestions would be consistent with the intent of the legislation. I am looking through them all again, and while there are one or two I will be looking to implement, in general your suggestions so far have aimed to kick the intent of this legislation in the knees rather than actually fix problems within it.

[Araraukar]

Generally, because I don't believe your suggestions would be consistent with the intent of the legislation. I am looking through them all again, and while there are one or two I will be looking to implement, in general your suggestions so far have aimed to kick the intent of this legislation in the knees rather than actually fix problems within it.

OOC: Please reply to them separately, then, for me and others to get your reasoning, because they are things in effect in RL, most of them are things in effect in RL everywhere, even nations with robust welfare systems, so they are by all counts entirely reasonable. Which means that your proposal, well, isn't.

[Kenmoria]

“The definition of ‘bereavement’ seems overly prescriptive. Some people are incredibly close to their cousins, whereas others might have barely even seen their siblings. In many cultures, grandparents have an incredibly important role in a child’s development, and their loss might easily equal that of a parent.”

[Bananaistan]

"Broad strokes international resolutions trying to make specific regulations leads to bad law. Especially with arbitrary numbers.

"Why shouldn't sick leave be for the period that a person is sick and what's this nonsense about one-eight of a calendar year? Is the employer supposed to pony up money and hire someone else to cover six and a half weeks' work when someone has no more than a cold or a sprained ankle?

"Demonstrating symptoms of sickness" is far too broad. Many symptoms are minor and do not prevent people from working.

"What's this about seeking treatment? Why not during treatment?

"A fortnight off for bereavement because your girlfriend of two weeks died is excessive.

"What have you got against single fathers? But even so, a full year is excessive.

"Personal leave - what even is this? The rest of society or employers are supposed to pay people to go off doing God knows what?

"The allows clause is a sop to allow niggardly employers get off without paying holiday pay.

"Necessitates clause - what about seasonal employees? Or if the period of absence begins at the start of a calendar year before any pay date in that year?

"Mandates clause - so if the CEO goes off on a quest to find himself, the state could end up paying him millions for his personal leave. No thanks. The whole thing should be capped.

"Requires clause - again what if these freelancers or self-employed are engaged in seasonal work or are very successful. Why should the rest of society sub them?

"This needs a lot of work still."

[Araraukar]

"An existing resolution might get in the way of the entirety of this proposal, given that its fourth clause makes it the right of the member nations - instead of the WA - to decide on matters of work time. And no, it doesn't say "daily work time", so it should be read to also affect work time on the larger scale such as annual working days or such."