My job is the exact opposite of all of your jobs. As long as someone is there to do the work and word doesn't get back to my boss (i.e. If I don't see it, it might as well have not happened), we can take off as many days as we'd like. If it starts to get excessive, he feels it's going to piss someone off that isn't taking off a lot of days, and they will come tell him. It's childish and juvenile and leads to slacker lazy asses taking off days for anything, and I mean anything.
I'm entirely for taking off days if you're sick so you don't spread the sickness. What ends up happening, though, is that when those slacker employees are taking off days and saying they're sick when they most likely aren't, on the days that they are sick, nobody really believes them. It breeds a lack of trust and dependability and I seriously wish my boss enforced sick day policy. There was a guy who took off the other day (2 days, actually) because his shoulder was sore. :l
And since my current position sees me working with only one other person every single shift, when BOTH of the employees I'm working with are lazy slackers who don't like to work, it translates into me doing the work of two people for the majority of time that I'm working.
Edit: Oh, and I wanted to add that my job is salary and all vacation/sick days are paid leave. So when you combine that with people not being kept in line about their sick days, it's like free fucking money.