Paid Sick Days

By Megan

“I was forced to ask my boss for some time off so I could take care of my sibling. When I asked for a few days of leave, my boss told me flat-out: if you go, don’t bother coming back.

This was said by Ai Elo, a restaurant worker from Brooklyn, on Feministing.com. The question is, is this fair? Should we get paid for taking sick days off? I believe so. In our era, many people go through a range of things on a daily basis. We get sick, deaths occur, something comes up and we just can not make it. Being that I am not yet in the official “on the books’ workforce, I’m speaking for females in general. Not only is it ignorant for someone to practically fire you because of you asking for a few days off in order to look over the well being of a family member or whatever the case may be, but it’s sad. Sad because the person who is threatening to fire you doesn’t seem to know what reality is like. Sometimes you need to put yourself in the shoes of others just to see things from their perspective. I know I’m not speaking for myself when I say that family means a lot, and if one of my family members were sick, I would give up all it takes to be by their sides. Even if that means giving up a few days of work, I would still like to get paid. Especially if I’m working around the hourly minimum wage, a few days off will do a lot of damage to my compensation. If you are sick yourself, how can you preform a task correctly? Germs do spread all over the air and many colds and sicknesses are deemed to be contagious. I also agree with getting paid during maternity leave, but at least pregnant woman can’t get fired because they’re pregnant as stated in The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.