A related question: Should an employee be forced to choose between going to work and possibly spreading his disease or staying at home and losing income?
You can make the big government argument, one that I am not unsympathetic to, but looking at the issue practically, there are other factors that must enter into one’s thinking on the subject.
The Associated Press article on the subject frames the issue in terms of the worse-than-normal flu outbreak. This is a particularly nasty strain of the bug that hits hard and is very contagious.
Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.
To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.
“Right now, where companies’ incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.
Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia’s mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.
In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn’t include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.
Five sick days is too many for a relatively healthy person. I’ve been under union contracts that had 3-5 days of sick leave and/or personal leave with the incentive that unused sick days were paid as salary in the last pay check of the year. Most of my co-workers took one or two mental health days a year and pocketed the rest.
Another factor is our aging population. The older you are, the more severely colds and flu impact the body. Without a couple of days rest, the body can’t fight the disease as easily as it could when you were in your 20′s and 30′s. It makes sense from a productivity standpoint to grant employees a couple of days off to get better and make spreading the bug less likely.
But on the other side of the coin, there are many small businesses that simply can’t afford to pay employees if they’re not at work producing. Many times, a business has to call in temp help to cover a sick employee who’s out. Anyone who’s ever run an office knows this is not cheap. Then there’s the question of employees abusing the sick day rule, although policing the problem is difficult. There are some companies that demand the employee get a doctor’s note before they can return to work. But most people don’t go to a doctor for a cold or even the flu. And the expense of going to a doctor to get a note defeats the purpose of a paid sick day. Rather than be forced to pay for a visit to a doctor, the employee is likely to come to work anyway.
No ready solution presents itself, but it is a problem that should be dealt with as our workers age and health care costs continue their upward direction.
The ready solution that presents itself if there must be legislation is that an employer must offer some number of UNPAID sick days without penalty. Abuse of paid sick leave is rampant and doctors will sign a leaf that blows in through the window, so doctors excuses are not just useless but they increase healthcare costs. I’ll buy that small employers can’t afford paid sick leave, but an employee who gets sick shouldn’t get fired for needing a few days off. And that with the usual caveats about the scammers, because there will be some.
Unless you’re a fascist, the answer is: This is a STATE issue to be decided in STATE legislatures. The federal government has no authority here.
“But on the other side of the coin, there are many small businesses that simply can’t afford to pay employees if they’re not at work producing.”
What is the productivity of several rather sick employees? What is a small companies productivity where employees are playing ‘daisy-chain’ with a nasty bug? If you have a sick-day policy, there are times when its unavoidable good business practice to use it in the best interest of both the employees and the company.
A large corporation I used to work with, had 13 mill sites around the country that ran at 80-85% capacity. They did this to assure productivy levels required to meet market demand in any event of mass illness, labor strikes, equipment failures, fire and explosion, etc., and the milling requirements could be shifted to non affected mill sites.
When people are sick they don’t profitablly produce and can present an ongoing and even more costly health problem and loss of manpower — $$$! Take the hit and then play catch up.
“Rather than be forced to pay for a visit to a doctor, the employee is likely to come to work anyway.”
That is a foolish game to play. One, it spreads disease! Two, not everyone knows for certain if they have or not, a perpensity to complications health from even a simple cold or a more complex flu virus. Health care irrepsonsibility on the part of individuals cost employers a great deal over time.
” Health care irresponsibility on the part of individuals cost employers a great deal over time.” Bingo. What about it simply being a population that no longer cares about what’s right, or concern for others? Why does the gov’mint need to butt in here, but not in healthcare or subsidies, etc?? I remember when I just got my first job, plenty of people that just called in sick , out of concern for the other employees. No sick leave, no pay, but it was the right thing to do. Now, when someone picks up anything, it seems it’s ” stay away from me I’m sick”. It doesn’t matter how irresponsible or gluttonous their lifestyle may be, it seems it’s my fault if I catch something.
Stay out of private sector compensation and benefits.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings will visit if you fail this test of wisdom.
So far, every mandated rule for private business and its relationship to employees has resulted in fewer of those pesky employees. Kind of a guaranteed invocation of the rule of unintended consequence.
Benefits, including paid sick time, are a matter of free market competition in the private sector. Labor is, whether it believes it or not, commoditized. Making it more expensive means that less of the commodity will be bought.
How did that “living wage” thingy work out for all those folks? Not so well, as I recall.
Having sick days be cashed out at the end of the year is not wise. Let them be carried over from year to year so that they also serve as short-term disability insurance.
Once you realize the depth of abuse of sick days by public sector employees, there is a reason that private employers just “don’t go there”.
Just a good example:
Last year one of my son’s teacher for English III was getting ready to retire and had a large number of accumulated sick days. For the majority of the school year, he took off every Friday and Monday – the substitute showed movies – and no they didn’t even relate to literature topics. Then, starting after Spring Break, he didn’t come in for the rest of the year – leaving the class with a long term sub and no lesson plans. In the meantime, the teacher had gone to work for a private school. So, over the course of a school year, 138 students received little to no subject matter instruction, the school district paid full salary and benefits for an employee who performed none of the work for which he was hired and the teacher collected a second paycheck working at another job during the same hours he already had a job for. I wish I could say it was uncommon, but it’s not. Any given school year, I can point out up to a dozen teachers using the same stunt.