Are there any benefits of FMLA beyond preserving your job?
How will your employer treat your pay and benefits status while you're on leave?   Disability income coverage and leave policies work in tandem to solve very different problems.  Disability income coverage covers your income, leave policies guarantee your status as an employee.   Typically, STD coverage requires an actual loss of income and will offset it's stated benefit for any income you're receiving.  In general you can't begin a STD claim after the 7 day waiting period and also draw income from vacation or sick time.  Also, typically STD will cover some percentage of your covered pay (sometimes including commission/bonus income) up to some weekly maximum. FLMA requires employers to allow certain amounts of time for certain types of leave.  FMLA is not necessarily an income replacement tool like STD coverage.   Contrary to your post it's my understanding that if sick and vacation time accrue in to a single PTO bucket your employer is prohibited from requiring employees to exhaust accrued time prior to beginning FMLA leave. In general, you're not missing anything because the point of FMLA is to guarantee your job and status as an employee from a benefits perspective. Benefits language from the Department of Labor Website A covered employer is required to maintain group health insurance coverage, including family coverage, for an employee on FMLA leave on the same terms as if the employee continued to work. In your situation, it sounds like the only added benefit would be insurance continuance.  For employees who can't access short-term disability it is a critical protection against losing their job. I just want to emphasize that given that you are in a pretty decent employment situation.
No, but they do have a moral obligation to give the employees that stay commensurately for the share if productivity.   If a company had 100 clerks, and fired 90 with the introduction of computers, shouldn't there be a somewhat balanced share of those savings going to the computer clerks? "The company itself doesn't benefit. In most cases, it's an expense as the match that many offer is going to cost the company some percent of salary.  As Mike said, it's part of the benefit package. Vacation, medical, dental, cafeteria plans (i.e. both flexible spending and dependent care accounts, not food), stock options, employee stock purchase plans, defined contribution or defined benefit pension, and the 401(k) or 403(b) for teachers. Each and all of these are what one should look at when looking at ""total compensation"". You allude to the lack of choices in the 401(k) compared to other accounts. Noted. And that lack of choice should be part of your decision process as to how you choose to invest for retirement. If the fess/selection is bad enough, you need to be vocal about it and request a change. Bad choices + no match, and maybe the account should be avoided, else just deposit to the match.  Note - Keith thanks for catching and fixing one typo, I just caught another." almost all unions want the business they are in to survive. Most of the stories you hear are such an extreme outlier or just plain made up.  Believe it or not, everyone in the union, wants the corp to survive to pay them retirement benefits. They dont want to rape the corp like corps rape resources.  They want fair pay. They want pay to go up when the company does better, just like companies tend to demand pay cuts or fire people when the company does worse.  quit treating people like a commodity and instead treat them like actual people helping your actual corp to actually grow. I recently rejected an offer at a different firm that would have provided a 14k yearly increase. The reason for the rejection was because I would have had to give up two work from home days, my commute would have been about an hour and half each way, I would have lost about 14 extra days of PTO and holiday pay, and the new company didn't match anything for 401k. Financial benefit? No. No matter whether you are paid based on a salary or by the hour, the frequency of your pay check has no effect since at the end of the year you will have received the exact same amount of money. Psychological benefit? Well, from the many answers and comments on this page that seem to think there is a difference, then apparently there is a large psychological difference. Whether that is a benefit or not, I guess, depends on your personality. Other than the guaranteed 5% bonus (assuming you sell it right away), no benefits. Keep in mind that the price from which the discount is calculated is not necessarily the market price at the date of the ESPP purchase, so the actual discount may be more than 5% (depending on the volatility of the stock - much more). "I write software myself and was involved in a couple of start ups.  One failed, another was wildly successful, but I did not receive much in compensation. The former I received stock, but since it failed, it was worthless anyway.  There should be compensation for your time in addition to equity in a company.   Any agreement needs be in writing.  In the later situation I was told to expect about a 17%/year bonus, but nothing could be guaranteed.  Translation:  ""It will never happen.""  It didn't, but I meet my lovely wife there so I have that for a bonus. Agreements need to address the bad things can happen.  What happens if one of you is no longer interested in continuing?  What happens if one of you die, or addicted to something?  What happens if one of you gets thrown in jail or disabled?  Right now you are full of optimism and hope, but bad things happen.  Cover those things while you still like each other. It might be enough to have a good salary, and some stock options.  You man not be interested in running the day to day business. Most of all good luck, I wish you all the best!" I've always been a proponent that being laid off or fired is the best thing that can happen to an individual. It's very painful and scary in the short term, but the long term results in a much better life and level of happiness. I've seen it in friends, read it in articles, and experienced it personally. This hurts today - but they're going to attain a new level of happiness and reward. "I was on a form of a retainer for a little over a year.  My situation kind of sucked but there's ways in which it would be favourable. I was pretty green at the time and just agreed to what they wanted. I worked for them as an employee for over a year, but they didn't pay overtime so I asked to work part time for them instead. They bait and switched me to work contractor. I renegotiated pay to be higher to fit that. I was paid minimum 22.5 hours a week, on a monthly schedule, plus any extra hours I worked.  In reality a retainer would pay in advance and you wouldn't have to actually be present for the minimum hours like I was. Still was better than being an employee.  I worked as an ""application developer"". But this isn't an unheard of thing in the tech sector; former employees that built your systems to be contracted at a later date to provide their expertise at a higher rate because they are the most familiar with the system and/or have a track record of being very good at satisfying the business' specifications or needs." I don't want to argue any, either, I'll just reiterate what I was originally trying to get at:   Your boss/owner/manager is dependant on you creating enough value to pay their paycheck as well.  Managers do not directly create value for the company.  They might bring in deals, they might 'know' someone, etc.  but in the end, workers make the product.  If a worker leaves, they'll just have to get another one, or that value ceases.  Taken to the extreme, they'd be a company of bosses &amp; managers, and no work at all being done.  (but plenty of TPS reports done with the correct cover sheets.) "I just don't know how else an employee gains any bargaining power without one? It seems to me in companies in my industry that those without unions bargain their own wage in secret. Then the company wins because its me vs you all the time. A union makes wages and benefits more transparent. You can pick up a copy of my collective bargaining agreement and see what everyone makes. Also you gain the backing legally with resources not available to most persons on their own. I just don't know another way employees can have any ""advantage"" in a common workplace." Yes but the employee losing that job can be devastating because as someone who works for minimum wage (in college and living at home right now so my cost of living is low) but without that I would have no savings. "Bad employees are a risk when they are not easily replaceable or have great responsibility, neither of which apply to Subway. I am aware of the multiplier effect, but there must be a corresponding value added to the economy, otherwise you artificially inflate prices and no one is better off. Caring for good employees and their well being is not the same as giving everyone a blanket ""living wage"" which could be honestly anything, depending on the standard of living used as an index." Conversly, then you should not enjoy the benefits privided by being in a union then right?  That seems simple enough, but that's not how it works.   Unions by law have the duty of fair representaion, so even if you are not a member, you still are awarded all the benefits and protections of the contract.   So, it's not that simple, because how do you balance that if not for fair share?  The union still has to pay to protect you, but you don't have to pay for any of the work they do.  So then, if you can get all the benefits of being in the union and not pay a dime for it, why would you?  Seems logical right, it's a good deal, we all want to save money.   Well as everyone stops paying and the union can't afford to operate as it did, like any organization, it restructures and lays off staff.  Now the union no longer has the resources to offer you good representation, which causes the dues paying members to be frustrated and to drop out and or ditch the union entirely.  Now no one in your workplace has a voice, a contract, or any protections.   That may turn out to be great,  but you know, the company wants to save money too..   The company is also no longer obligated to offer you the same wages or benefits that your coworkers negotiated.  So now the company is free to cut wages, benefits and workforce to improve thier bottom line or executive bonuses. There is no benefit in life insurance as such (ie, death insurance.) There is a great deal of value in other types though: total and permanent disability insurance, trauma insurance (a lump sum for a major medical event), and income protection insurance (cover against a temporary but disabling medical condition).  If you don't have that, you should get it right now. This is about the most important insurance you can carry.  Being unable to work for the rest of your life has a far larger impact than having, say, your car stolen. ...  If, later on, you acquire dependents, and you feel you ought to have life insurance, then you will have a relationship with a life insurance company, and maybe they will let you upgrade from income/TPD to income/TPD/life without too much fuss or requalification.  Some do; whether yours would I don't know.  But at least you have a toe in the door with them, in a way that is infinitely more immediately useful than getting life insurance that you don't actually need.