at a reasonable company, the person in your example would be allowed to accrue negative PTO to go on vacation with their family.
there are pros and cons to merged time off. psychologically, it sucks to burn "vacation" to take time off to recover from an illness. on the flip side, there is no reason for my manager to suspect me of abusing sick leave or verify my illness (which sounds super draconian). if I'm not feeling well, it's just a quick slack message and then I go back to drinking tea with lemon. also, unused PTO is usually paid out when you leave the company in the private sector. sick leave, AFAIK, is usually not.
there's definitely something to your public health argument, but as an individual it's hard to see why I would ever prefer x PTO + y sick leave over (x + y) PTO.
In this particular trade-off, yes, you could go into negative PTO for a particular vacation. However, it is still trading a future vacation day away.
I don't think there should be any verification for minor illnesses. My company has an unlimited sick leave policy, and I've never needed to do more than send a quick "I'm not feeling well, should be back tomorrow." email. One of the other commenters mentioned Norway's system of having a doctor's note only after X sick days have been used, which seems reasonable.
Agreed that (x+y) PTO is individually preferable to (x vacation) + (y sick leave). That said, as thaeli mentioned, usually it isn't a summation. In moving from a standard of (10 vacation) + (10 sick leave) to a merged pool, the result was a standard of (15 PTO) rather than 20. That there isn't an individual push for the separation is also why it needs to be a regulation, rather than something left to the free market, because there is definitely a public health argument on it.
> I don't think there should be any verification for minor illnesses. My company has an unlimited sick leave policy, and I've never needed to do more than send a quick "I'm not feeling well, should be back tomorrow." email. One of the other commenters mentioned Norway's system of having a doctor's note only after X sick days have been used, which seems reasonable.
I'm sure there are reasonable companies that make pretty much any legal arrangement work well for the employees. but I'm an anxious person, so I can't help imagining the worst possible interpretation of my actions. I feel much more comfortable taking PTO than sick leave, even though I have a trusting manager.
I understand that different people have different needs/desires regarding time off, but I personally don't take it very often. I'm glad that I can choose employment where this results in me walking away with a fairly large check at the end. I would be very much opposed to any regulation that takes this away, though I could certainly support a law that requires employers to offer a choice between merged and separate.
there are pros and cons to merged time off. psychologically, it sucks to burn "vacation" to take time off to recover from an illness. on the flip side, there is no reason for my manager to suspect me of abusing sick leave or verify my illness (which sounds super draconian). if I'm not feeling well, it's just a quick slack message and then I go back to drinking tea with lemon. also, unused PTO is usually paid out when you leave the company in the private sector. sick leave, AFAIK, is usually not.
there's definitely something to your public health argument, but as an individual it's hard to see why I would ever prefer x PTO + y sick leave over (x + y) PTO.