GRE Argument Essay
The argument claims that according to the recent reasearch employees with paid sick leaves are less likely to get involved in work related accidents than employees who do not get paid sick leaves. Stated in this way the argument manipulates several facts and presents the distorted view of the situation, fails to mention several key factors, which could have been used to make the argument more substantive and clear. The conclusion of the argument relies on the assumptions for which there is no clear evidences. Hence, the argument is weak, rather unconvincing and has several flaws.
First of all, the argument claims that workers are pressurized to work when they do not get paid sick leaves. Though this can be the reason but claiming this to be alone is false. There can be many reasons for which worker are forced to work during the period when they are sick. Hence, the claim is stretch. To illustrate this let us look at the example of person who has several responsibilites, for example, education of children, medicine of sick parents. These responsibilites can pressurized the worker to work even on the days when is unable to work with all his senses. Clearly, in the above situation claim of the Author fails. The argument could have been much clearer if it explicitly stated that the workers who were tested had no responsibilities in their homes. Love for the family often forces people to push their limits.
Second, the argument's claim can be falsified by taking the note of the work of workers, there is no mention of the work of the employees. There can be some work which gets more affected when the workers are even slightly distracted from their work. To illustrate this, take the instance of home builders, labours who work in construction works need to be in greater attention all the time, unlike desk job workers who are responsilbe to work with only computers. While in the case of labour who work as builders, their slight mistake can be fatal for them and many, but in this case of desk job workers they are able to sleep on their desks. If the argument had provided evidences about the work environment of the workers who participated in the reasearch then the argument would have been more convincing.
Finally, the research presented also lacks a depth of detail that would help us to evaluate the significance of the results. What was the size of the group which was studied? Whether the group was large enough to extrapolate the result to the large population. What was the heterogeneity of the group in terms of work culture, work envioronment, pay per day? Does that group cover every type of wroking conditions, work culture, geographical position of the work place. Without convincing answers to these questions, on is left with the impression that argument if more of a wishful thinking rather than a substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therfore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts like working culture, geographical position, especailly working environment. In order to assess the merits of the situation. It is necessary to have full knowledge of all the relevant facts. In this particular case whole argument can be falsified, if we consider the family conditions of the workers. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.
