New Type of Leave

As a state worker I am blessed because we earn some great leave. Every two weeks I accumulate 5 hours and 25 minutes of Annual leave and 4 hours and 20 minutes of Sick leave. I also accrue 8 hours of Personal leave annually. This is a whole lot of leave, more than most people who work in the private economy get. Which makes sense. When a person is on paid leave, the employeer is compensating an individual while not getting any work from that individual. In a strict, philosophical sense one could argue that the worker is actually stealing money from the employeer.

Now, most employeers have no problem with reasonable sick and vacation leave policies. They see providing paid leave to their employees as an asset to thier business. People who never get away can become burned out and ineffective. People who are sick come to work and make other workers sick and productivity tanks. Leave, then, becomes a form of insurance to the employeer to keep productivity at good level.

However, paid leave is a benefit provided by the grace and mercy of the employeer and is not a right. This means that employees should look upon leave as a gift from their employeer and, therefore, cherish the gift and respect the gift. We would all consider it rude for someone who had been given a gift to disparge the gift and ask for more features of the gift. We would think that person is ungrateful and selfish.

The Manufacturing Workers Union, I think, can therefore be categorized as ungrateful and selfish. They are requesting a new type of leave. Menstrual leave. Yes, you heard me correctly, they want women to recieve paid, time-off for thier periods. This would be implemented by giving women 12 extra days off a year with pay for menstrual pain. The union says that women shouldn't be disadvantaged against men that don't have periods.

I am in the process of coding a new Time and Leave Tracking Application for my department. I wonder if I should go ahead and add this type of leave to the system now because I have a sneaky suspicion that if it passes in Australia, it won't be too long before we hear women clamoring for the same "right" here.