Wal-Mart cracks down on unhealthy workers

Another black eye for the Evil Empire, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart was cracking down on people calling in sick. Employees that want to call off have to call a 1-800 number and get a code to give to their manager. The system will track sick time and whether or not absences are authorized. Too many unauthorized call offs and the employee gets canned. The article I got this info from is here.


Having been a manager, and being an employee that almost never uses sick time, I can see a little of the other side of this argument. It's a pain when you have employees that frequently call off and corporate red tape actually makes it harder to crack down on them. But I think Wally-World is setting itself up for more lawsuits or major losses in its workforce. Either the system will have to make judgement calls, in which case someone will charge discrimination, or it will be ruthlessly impartial and people will get fired left and right. Might not sound so bad if the termed employee is some young slacker who calls off because he's always hung over from frequent partying, but what if it's a single mom with a baby that gets sick a lot?