I hope you haven't just eaten

Because this could make you lose it in sheer disgust. The Chicago Tribune for April 18 reported on the emergence of so-called "no-fault" attendance policies at a growing number of businesses, under which

there are no excuses for missing work unless time off is scheduled in advance. Any unplanned absence, whether for illness, a flat tire or family emergency, is a black mark. ...

No-fault policies eliminate judgments about whether an absence could have been avoided. Instead, they draw a strict line between planned and unplanned time off. Typically, no more than six unscheduled absences are tolerated within a year, although multiday illnesses count as one "occurrence."

Employees with paid days off for illness or emergencies still get paid, but these unplanned absences count against their attendance records.

(Note: The link is to an abstract; the full article is now in a for-pay archive.)

That is, you get "benefits," but it's a black mark against you if you actually use them. Get enough such demerits and you're out on your ear. At Lawson Products, one company mentioned,

[p]unching in one minute to one hour late earns half a point. Missing one to two hours merits one point. A full day adds two points.

Six points results in a reprimand; 10 points, suspension without pay. Employees can be fired if they exceed 12 points within a year.

Calling this "no-fault" doesn't even rise to the standard of ridiculous. The proper name is "all-fault," that is, if you're the employee, any "unplanned absence" is all your fault, your failing, and you deserve whatever consequences arise because it's actually all your doing and we bosses have no control over anything.

And yes, some make precisely and I do mean precisely that argument.

"When management says, 'We're going to give you an opportunity to fire yourself,' people understand that," said Gene Levine, a California-based consultant. "You decide how many times you want to be absent and you begin to count down to termination."

The bosses make up the rules, set the standards, ignoring the vagaries of real life all the while, but still it's all your fault: You "fire yourself." You "decide" to get sick. You "decide" to have a sick child. (Susan Lambert, associate professor at University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, says kids get sick an average of 10 days a year.) You "decide" to have a family emergency. It's all your decision, your free choice, and oh, the poor, poor, beleaguered bosses do not have one blessed little thing to do with it, you miserable failure as a worker and as a human being.

Levine described his approach at a company that was unhappy about having to fire an employee after she missed work because of her grandmother's death.

"In each of the absences you had before, was there any one you could have avoided?" Levine recalled asking the woman.

She acknowledged one, he said.

"We're not firing you because of your grandmother but because of that date," he told her.

I mean, just how much more vile can this get? Not only is this a patent lie, it's not even a good lie: Since the decision to fire her was made before they knew of an "avoidable absence," it clearly was not because of that. He is a boldfaced liar.

But the point is, they don't care! The bosses don't care that they're liars, they don't care that they can be proved to be liars. Because this isn't about fairness or dealing honestly with employees or even about "clear standards."

Such "no-fault" attendance programs ... are migrating from factories and warehouses to white-collar environments as companies try to standardize discipline and wrest greater control over workers' schedules.

That's what it's about: Power. Control. Domination. The fact is, the bosses figure that they're back in the catbird seat, that unions have been tamed or crushed; they know that workers, lacking a common voice and a joint strength, have little negotiating room and so more and more the bosses can pretty much do as they damn please, impose whatever new soul-deadening but profit-protecting scheme enters their fetid little minds.

Just consider that

[s]uch policies are gaining sway in an unforgiving economy where staffing is lean and turnover and absenteeism are chronic problems in some lower-paying clerical, technical and service jobs, experts said.

According to classic economic notions, such conditions - tight staffing and high turnover - should push employers into being more flexible with employees, the better to obtain and retain them. But instead they're being used as excuses to do exactly the opposite.

Sooner or later, this will change; sooner or later, enough people will get fed up enough to reverse the trend back to a job being little more than a daily sojourn to a feudal estate. But the truth is, I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Footnote, Math Div.: One excuse offered is that "unexpected absences" cost large companies "millions of dollars," amounting to 4% of payroll costs. However, a survey of HR executives - not likely to be the most pro-employee group - said that only 10% of those absences arise from an "entitlement mentality," when employees take a day off just because they think they deserve one. Ignoring the pejorative phrasing and leaving aside the fact that employees do sometimes deserve just to take a day off (a friend used to call it "a mental health day"), that still means that amounts to just 0.4% of payroll. Put another way, 99.6% of payroll costs can be ascribed to work time, planned absences such as vacations, and unplanned absences for good and valid cause. But that doesn't sound quite so dramatic, does it?

Footnote, Unintentional Humor Div.: James Smith, vice president of human resources at Lawson Products, the outfit that gives gigs for tardiness, says the company "has always gone out of its way to be a very family-friendly place to work."

The Addams family, maybe.