Mandatory Insurance for Time-off, Caregiving, and Health (MITCH) Act
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2026
829 points (99.2% liked)
Work Reform
17465 readers
1243 users here now
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
You should work on politics :D
Yes.
Unfortunately, conservatives believe in hierarchy. There are different rules for different people and, to them, that's good, right, and natural.
They don't see it as a contradiction because to them it is not. Mitch gets time off because he's special and deserves it.
Without cracking that world view, progress will be very limited.
This is what people don't get.
Republicans love being stepped on because those doing the stepping are rich and therefore smarter and therefore in a higher social bracket and therefore allowed to do whatever they want. They only care when they specifically are the ones in the crosshairs. No amount of empathy politics or fairness matter, because they "earned" their right to be an asshole (by cheating and exploiting labor, but they arent ready for that conversation)
I remember a video from (I think) the alt right playbook series, where he remarked on how this kind of hierarchy is self similar at different levels. They get stepped on but they also get to step on the people below them. That's part of why they don't like things that help people they see as lesser. They need to stay down so they can be stepped on!
load more comments
(2 replies)
Unfortunately, conservatives believe in hierarchy.
indeed, same everywhere, eg wages, some C suite being paid $50Mil is not a problem, they deserve it after all, a raise in the minimum wage ? heresy!
You crack that worldview by making them the losers in it. So if you work with a conservative, you make sure they don’t get their days off. You make sure that every single bad thing they do they need to count for they get fired. This is really easy. The problem is is that people on our side have all this empathy for assholes.
That might work, but having just read "Dying of Whiteness" I worry it wouldn't. There are people who would literally rather die than upset the hierarchy. They know their place in it. They will do their duty.
They wouldn't be conservatives if they were progressive
Also, if you’re missing from work for months as an elected official it should automatically trigger a special election to replace you. If I get fired for not showing up, they should too.
Yeah and we'd get fired for a "No call, no show" like next day.
Lmao, as if they'd wait a day. I've seen multiple people get fired for "No call, no show" that same dag when management forgot they gave them the day off
I've seen the opposite. Hiring is such a nightmare that some managers will turn a blind eye for days - even weeks - if the employee isn't critical and the hiring process is sufficiently bureaucratic.
I remember hearing an employer begging people to come in, because he'd been saddled with flakey teenagers who weren't paid enough to give a shit one way or another.
If I get fired for not showing up
Technically, FMLA is supposed to prevent this from happening. You'd go on disability if you were out for months. But your employer couldn't fire you without opening themselves up to Wrongful Termination.
I'm sure his dear colleagues in the senate have been donating their sick days to him.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Democrats will call this a fringe idea even though European countries already do it. The overton window has shifted; we consider far-right policy (like building a wall across the border) but we can't afford universal healthcare and parental leave.
The overton window has shifted
Hardly on it's own.
A ton of money goes into telling Americans that they can't afford vacation or sick leave. Even as a ton more goes into telling us that AI will be replacing our jobs momentarily.
Which is inself so fucking absurd. Can you imagine spending money to convince other people to work harder? Like, as a concept to itself it's so absurd.
Yeah the billionaires are working overtime. Probably easy to do when you have more money than some countries.
edit: I don't mean they literally are working hard. I mean they stand against worker's rights.
Well... someone on their payroll is working overtime
They work "overtime" because they log every meal as working and having an idea at 2am, while trying to ignore the ghosts of hell screaming at them, demanding they repent, as overtime.
I'd love to see the Twatter replies.
Hey. It's the kid that survived a school shooting and has worked to make our nation better ever since, even after knuckledragger Marjorie "Neanderthal" Greene stalked and harassed him in public.
This isn't a meme, do it.
M - Mandatory
I - Indefinite
T - Term
C - Coverage
H - (for) Hospitalization
The MITCH act is a guarantee for your employment, salary and relief from any required government service/appearance, for the duration of time required for you to fully heal and recover from injury/illness, in home or medical facility, while under the active care of a licensed physician.
P.s. And since we are requiring that doctor as well, we're going to need to just offer universal healthcare for all as an add on, m'kay.
Don’t stop there.
My grandfather was at one point a regional manager for a coffee distributor. He got cancer. The company was self insured in such a way that they had to foot his medical bills. They did.
Post recovery, my grandfather describes his remaining time with the company as miserable. For example, they reassigned him to a notoriously bad region while not providing any relocation assistance. Expectation likely being that he would underperform as a remote manager for their worst region. He didn’t.
Following about six months of a toxic work experience, they took him out to dinner to let him know in public that his role was being discontinued. He wasn’t being fired, but he’d be required to accept a demotion into a sales position if he wanted to stay. He did not stay.
Decades later, one of the C-suite members retire. My gramps was close with this guy, who could not speak “off the record” until now. The guy said that C-suite had it out for gramps, viciously so. They wanted him to quit, because they knew that cancer often comes back. They did not want to pay another set of medical bills, so they made gramps life miserable to try avoiding the potential expense.
So, how do you protect people like my gramps in this situation?
Your solution is still better than nothing, but it should go further.
Yet another reason to be dissatisfied with employer provided health insurance. They want to be the provider of health insurance coverage so that its availability can be used as leverage against workers, and if you need to actually use in any significant way you'll be punished.
That sucks. Yet somehow it seems like one of the better outcomes in America. I feel like now they'd just find some reason to fire the person or lay them off and thus not cover the medical bills to begin with. Hell, my wife was fired during the maternity leave the company offered because she actually took it rather than I guess just being so grateful that she worked through it.
load more comments
(2 replies)
A really good idea to build upon this is to set the amount of paid time off to same amount of time to who over has the most absentism in Congress.
Your local representative hasn't shown up to vote in four months. Now, everyone in America gets four months of paid time.
This also covers loved ones and business partners collecting your full paycheck after you’ve died.
starting with every serviceman deployed to the USS Abraham Lincoln.
burn mitches house, congress, senate, white house
burn it all
fuck this government
load more comments
(3 replies)
Nah you see, if others do it, it's communism
They don’t have the balls to do that. But it would be hilarious.
I'm for better paid leave. But do companies pay it or is there a national fund? Because as someone who runs a very small nonprofit organization that feeds our community with a handful of employees, if three of them went out on paid leave and I had to pay them plus temporary replacements long term, we would go under. There's a reason we don't have more employees. We paid two people on long term leave last year for good reason, and we lost 65% of our savings.
In a better country, your non-profit wouldn't need to exist because it was a government service.
load more comments
(2 replies)
But do companies pay it or is there a national fund?
Listen, I agree that people need time to have lunch and take shits.
But why are businesses forced to pay for these hours of idle labor? Shouldn't we have the government assume the cost they're imposing on private industry?
We should be privatizing the profits. We need socialize the losses. That's the only way a business can actually function profitably.
someone who runs a very small nonprofit organization that feeds our community with a handful of employees
Should definitely be keeping a staffer with influenza on site, making food for other people.
And pay. And perks. And retirement.
America needs to better deal with the selfish and cruel within it.
That's not how America works.
It seems like you're advocating for all workers to die.
The ultimate General Strike.
view more: next ›