Mandatory Sick Pay

[Aramike]

I live in the People's Republic of Milwaukee, where in November our populace voted in favor of businesses being required to provide sick pay to all employees. Just this week a judge ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional.

So, I now ask the Subsim Radio Room: would you be for or against mandatory paid sick leave in your town? Why?

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/47930647.html

If folks actually used 'sick pay' for when they were sick this wouldn't be an issue. More personal responsibility lost. We've all done it, but it doesnt make it right.

[UnderseaLcpl]

I would be against it, despite the biased form the question was posed in, for the same reason that CastleBravo is opposed to it. It destroys incentive. It's like asking if employees should be payed to attend free T-shirt day the fair, or if they should just be given an extra two weeks' paid vacation.

Ultimately, it needs to be the employer's decision. If they do pay for sick leave no matter what, they'll suffer a loss in productivity. If they refuse, they might suffer a bigger loss in productivity due to everyone being sick, or because they suffer a high turnover rate. Let them decide, that's why they make the big bucks, or lose everything.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

I would be against it, despite the biased form the question was posed in, for the same reason that CastleBravo is opposed to it. It destroys incentive. It's like asking if employees should be payed to attend free T-shirt day the fair, or if they should just be given an extra two weeks' paid vacation.

Ultimately, it needs to be the employer's decision. If they do pay for sick leave no matter what, they'll suffer a loss in productivity. If they refuse, they might suffer a bigger loss in productivity due to everyone being sick, or because they suffer a high turnover rate. Let them decide, that's why they make the big bucks, or lose everything.

I agree with you 100%. The reason I posed the question the way I did is because that is the way our local liberal rag of a newspaper was reporting the referrendum at the time, and the question on the ballot was loaded as well.

Such a proposal is flat-out stupid. It sounds great to the uninformed, but then they fail to consider that SOMEONE is going to have to pay for these unproductive days. Most large corporations already have some form of paid time off. So guess who this hits?

Small businesses, of course. And who's going to pay for the business owner's sick days? Also, how many jobs will be cut to pay for this proposal? To your typical moron, it sounds great to mandate that your boss pays for your sick time ... until your boss can't even afford to have you on the payroll anymore. Now you went from maybe losing a couple of days worth of income to losing your income altogether.

This is nothing more than liberal "feel-good-ism". What will they do when businesses set up shop in municipalities surrounding Milwaukee, rather than within the city proper? Maybe that guy who was going to open up a shop in a blighted area, helping to improve the community, just won't do it now.

What's next: a mandate regarding how many jobs a business must provide?

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Most large corporations already have some form of paid time off. So guess who this hits?

Small businesses, of course. And who's going to pay for the business owner's sick days?

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.

From a pragmatic standpoint, paid sick leave helps stop the spread of sickness. At my job (where we get paid sick days) you're considered pretty rude if you come in to the office while you're sick. From a business owner's standpoint, ask yourself if you'd rather have one employee out sick and have to pay them, or have 20 employees all sick and at work because they need the money, but inefficient because you didn't want to pay them. Not to mention the societal costs at large of spreading an infectious illness amongst workers, then amongst workers families, friends, etc. That business owner is imposing his cost savings for not paying the employee to stay home on the rest of society by causing the infection of and lowering the efficiency of a multitude of people who otherwise may not have been exposed to illness.

In today's world of laptop computers, VPNs, teleconferencing and ubiquitous internet access, I'm sure the employee could do their critical job tasks from home while preventing the spread of disease. The net loss in productivity would be negligible, and it wouldn't increase costs because you would have been paying those people to come in to work anyways.

UnderseaLcpl, you bring up the idea of making us uncompetitive on the world stage. In reality, mandating sick leave would align us with the rest of the world:



The dark blue line is mandated sick leave, the light blue is mandated sick days.

So therefore I don't see how this would put us on unequal footing with the rest of the world.

[UnderseaLcpl]

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.

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.

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.

[d@rk51d3]

Here, you are awarded 6 days (I think) per year, paid sick leave. Any more than 2 days in a row will (usually) require a doctors certificate. What get's up my nose, is the lack of incentive for not taking "sickies", and those that habitually take them on Mondays or Fridays, thus making a long weekend of it. In 10 years at my last job, I had about 6 days off, 3 of which were spent in hospital............. no rewards, no thanks, not even an acknowledgement. Now, If I'm sick enough, I stay home. They don't hand out medals for killing yourself at work.

[August]

The school calls them "personal days" and we get 6 per year.

[SteamWake]

I probably have like a month of sick leave due to me, and at least 2 weeks of vacation accumulated.

I just dont use it. Im old fashoned that way.

Its kind of sad really where work ethics have gone.

[mookiemookie]

Employers need to realize that people have lives outside of work. If an employee needs to take a sick day for whatever reason (waiting for the air conditioner guy to come, pipes in your house burst, ate a bad burrito the night before) it shouldn't be a financial burden upon them.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Employers need to realize that people have lives outside of work. If an employee needs to take a sick day for whatever reason (waiting for the air conditioner guy to come, pipes in your house burst, ate a bad burrito the night before) it shouldn't be a financial burden upon them.

Every employer I have ever had has been fairly accomodating in such circumstances, but employees need to realize that their job is not a right and that there is more going on than just their own lives. In small businesses particularly, the attendance of a single employee can have a major impact on quarterly revenue and the welfare of the company and all their coworkers' livleyhoods. The whole idea of being an employee is that you are paid a wage that you and your employer agree upon for your continued service and skills. If the employer does not present terms you find favourable, you can seek employment elsewhere, and they can seek employees elsewhere.

Unless you like the idea of every business in America having the same quality of service, product selection, and prices(and attendant taxes) as Amtrak, the Post Ofiice, or the DMV, not to mention a host of unionized companies, you might want to reconsider your view. If your goal is to make our nation's industries uncompetitive in the world market for the sake of your personal convenience, then please persist in advocating your stance.

I don't mean to be too contrarian or agressive, Mark, but I'd like to hear your views when confronted with an argument like the one I posited above. I usually find that your posts offer a good perspective, so I'd like to hear what you have to say in response to this, if you don't mind.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Employers need to realize that people have lives outside of work. If an employee needs to take a sick day for whatever reason (waiting for the air conditioner guy to come, pipes in your house burst, ate a bad burrito the night before) it shouldn't be a financial burden upon them.

Wait...it shouldn't be a financial burden upon who? The employees? What about the employers?

[antikristuseke]

Here you get sick pay only when you have an actual doctor verify you as being sick. If you call in sick you have effectivaly violated the terms of most employment contracts and can be fired for it, though have never heard that happening, in allmost all cases you can just talk wit your employer if you need a day or two for what ever reason.

[gimpy117]

You should. your boss would stay home if e was. Hell, my mother's boss goes to vail every other week. and when people have to go to work with sickness, the flu etc. and get everybody else sick just because they literally can't afford to miss work (like my mom ) I think that's wrong.