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This paper deals with the problem of issuing unsubstantiated sick-leaves in Latvia. It adopts a comparative perspective contrasting legislation in Latvia and Spain regarding sick-leaves. It also looks at the document in historical and international law perspective.As such the document is simple and precise – it give time to recuperate and rights to income replacement to any employed person who is sick. The scope of the document in Latvia is wider than pure sickness – it includes maternity benefits and support in case of illness of a child under 14. There are more problems with unsubstantiated sick-leaves in Latvia than in Spain, and there are instant measures that Latvia could adopt, for instance, issue guidelines to doctors that would be an objective reference aimed at minimizing human error or personal compassion with patient. The paper finds that there is not enough evidence to conclude that corruption in the form of bribery is the largest problem for issuing unsubstantiated sick-leaves, yet there are factors that directly or through corruption could stimulate issuance of unsubstantiated sick-leaves. The conclusion is that sick-leave must be used only for the purpose it has been conceived of and any other use outside this remit should be eliminated, in most of the cases – through increased flexibility of the respective policy areas.

A compelling, but unsubstantiated, argument for paid sick leave legislation is that workers with leave are better able to address own and family member health needs without risking a voluntary or involuntary job separation. This study tests that claim using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and regression models controlling for a large set of worker and job characteristics, as well as with propensity score techniques. Results suggest that paid sick leave decreases the probability of job separation by at least 2.5 percentage points, or 25%. The association is strongest for workers without paid vacation leave and for mothers.

A compelling, but unsubstantiated, argument for paid sick leave legislation is that workers with leave are better able to address own and family member health needs without risking a voluntary or involuntary job separation. This study tests that claim using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and regression models controlling for a large set of worker and job characteristics, as well as with propensity score techniques. Results suggest that paid sick leave decreases the probability of job separation by at least 2.5 percentage points, or 25%. The association is strongest for workers without paid vacation leave and for mothers.

The COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the world, and the United States has been largely unsuccessful at containing the coronavirus. One long-standing policy failure stands out as having exacerbated the pandemic in our country: the lack of a national mandate of paid sick leaves, without which workers face financial and workplace-cultural pressures to attend work while sick, thus spreading the virus to their fellow employees and the public at large. This Article provides the blueprint for a national, subsidized mandate of paid sick leaves and two additional insights about our tax institutions as mechanisms of effectuating broader societal goals. It first justifies a paidsick- leave mandate on the grounds of market failures (both cognitive biases and externalities) and workplace equality. It also argues for the need of subsidies in order to protect lower-income workers from unemployment risks imposed by a national mandate. Second, the Article critically assesses the current federal legislative approach utilized in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA). Third, the Article proposes designing a national employer mandate of paid sick leaves funded by general-revenue business tax credits and providing partial wage replacement. This Article's discussion of paid sick leaves yields two insights about our tax institutions. It questions the role of payroll taxes, which are highly regressive, impose burdens almost exclusively on labor, and are normatively unjustified when the spending funded by payroll taxes benefits the broader non-wage-earning public. The Article also reveals the malleability of tax institutions with respect to funding, administrability, and costs. These comparative advantages of tax institutions make them perennially popular in times of crisis.

This thesis studies how sick leave legitimacy is managed in interaction and develops an empirically driven conceptualization of 'legitimacy work'. The thesis applies an ethnomethodological framework that draws on conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis. Naturally occurring interaction is examined in two settings: (1) multi-party meetings at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, in which participants assess and discuss the 'status' of the sick leave and plan for work rehabilitation; (2) peer-based online text-in-interaction in a Swedish forum thread that gathers people on sick leave. The thesis shows how mental states, activities and alternative categories function as resources for legitimacy work. However, such invocations are no straight-forward matter, but impose additional contingencies. It is thus crucial how they are invoked. By detailed analyses of the interaction, with attention to aspects such as lexicality and delivery, the thesis identifies a range of discursive features that manage sick leave legitimacy. Deployed resources are also subtle enough to be deniable as legitimacy work, that is, they also manage the risk of an utterance being seen as invested or biased. While legitimate sick leave is a core concern for Swedish policy-making, administration, and public debate on sick leave, previous research has for the most part been explanatory in orientation, minding legitimacy rather than studying it in its own right. By providing detailed knowledge about the legitimacy work that people on long-term sick leave do as part of both institutional and mundane encounters, the thesis contributes not only new empirical knowledge, but a new kind of empirical knowledge, shedding light on how the complexities of sick leave play out in real-life situations. Traditional sociological approaches have to a significant extent treated legitimacy as an entity with beginnings and ends that in more or less direct ways relate to external norms and cognitive states, or that focus on institutions, authority or government. By contrast, the herein emerging concept 'legitimacy work' understands legitimacy as a locally contingent practicality – a collaborative categorially oriented accomplishment that is integral to the interactional situation.