I knew you'd come up with something good, Mark
It would appear that I misstated myself. I should have said "less competitive" rather than "uncompetitive". It seems that we are behind the curve in mandated sick leave, at least.
Still, I don't consider that a reason to implement such a system. It could hardly be argued that mandating sick days is somehow going to
increase productivity. As you said yourself, the days could be used to wait for the AC repairman or whatever, and I think that is how most people will use them. That's certainly the case in a lot of companies with mandated benefits of that nature, as I said before.
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If it's mandated that EVERY business has paid sick time then EVERYONE gets hit equally, so save me the "think of the small businesses!" sob story. They are on equal footing if the law is applied equally across all businesses. I have no problem taking away the competitive advantage of a business owner who runs a sweatshop and forces their sick employees to work to save a buck.
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I also disagree with this. For a small business with only a handful of employees, mandated sick leave is more harmful than to large companies, as Aramike said. Small businesses typically don't maintain a reserve of employees or temps to fill in, and unexpected absences may neccessitate paying overtime to other employees to fill the gaps, not to mention continuing to pay the absent employee. For a business that nets only 100k anually, that adds up fast.
Furthermore, if you're working in a sweatshop, odds are you're not making much anyway, and so already qualify for many exsisting compensation benefits, including Federal unemployment and various types of medical assistance. Even if you lose your lousy job, there are plenty of others out there, even now.
The more I look at this, the more I think it is just another case of wanting something for nothing, and passing the expense along to people who actually produce things and make responsible fiscal decisions. Every fool on the planet knows that you should save money for unexpected circumstances and not live beyond your means. Just because they choose not to do so doesn't mean that all employers should have to pay for their short-sightedness.