Agreed on this.

The problem with the “light duties” argument is that every business out there is working with the bare minimum of staff. If you’ve got a number of workers on light duties for whatever reason then the other staff by definision must pick up their slack.

Quite aside from the issues and resentment in teams this creates (you sure as hell better believe I hate staying back 3 days a week to finish the report not finished by the mommies who leave early to pick up little Susie because the law says my company must let them, the extra money I work make sure it hurt less but when my plans are constantly “I may be able to make that dinner” I 100% resent those women and avoid any kind of interaction with them because I know I won’t hold my tongue when asked “so what are your plans this weekend?” “Oh I don’t know I thought I’d finish your overdue report, Karen and when that’s don’t maybe I’ll have enough daylight to take my dog for a walk in sunshine for the first time in a week...”l) this creates a ripe situation for the staff doing extra physical labour to get injured and thus need light duties.

So the options? Well no company is going to lose money. So they may put more staff on. But the end user costs will go up which people don’t want to pay or can’t afford. So that won’t happen.

Without state or federal assistance this kind of stuff will continue and only get worse as more people can’t afford proper health care.