Sick Leave Sniffles

California Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill allowing most California workers to take paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child or to care for sick family member. (AP Photo/Lee Celano, Pool)

Three weeks ago I practically crawled into an Ohio call center to report to work. I was nursing a terrible cold and was propped up by DayQuil and Mucinex. The drugs didn’t help. The center’s normal quiet drone of operators speaking into their headsets was punctuated by my coughs spraying sickness into the air. Why would I go to work in that state? I needed the money for rent and student loans. And I didn’t have a single sick day. So it was either lose 20 percent of my weekly paycheck or expose my colleagues to my contagions. Like millions of others without sick days, I chose the latter.

Ohio, like every other state in the union, does not have a law requiring employers to offer paid sick leave. Any attempts to enact such a law are met with the inevitable sky-is-falling arguments from small business organizations and chambers of commerce. These interests have been mostly successful in crushing legislation designed to protect sick workers. But there’s reason to believe the tide is turning. Traditionally liberal cities San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have passed legislation requiring businesses to offer some form of paid sick leave for full-time employees. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, passed similar legislation last year. And a certain former senator from Illinois turned president-elect has publicly stated his intention to offer seven days of paid sick leave to all Americans with a full-time job.

The first paid sick leave law in America was approved by San Francisco voters on Nov. 4, 2006. According to a National Public Radio report, the push for this legislation “was engineered by a coalition of mostly young restaurant workers.” A study (PDF, see page 7) from Human Impact Partners concluded that only 15 percent of workers in the food preparation and service industry are offered paid sick days. That can negatively impact the health of that person’s family, coworkers, and customers.

The San Francisco law requires (PDF) that local businesses offer one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours an employee works for that business. This applies to part-time and seasonal workers as well as the workers docking 40 hours a week. Employees can’t accrue more than 72 hours of sick leave. To protect small business, that number shrinks to 40 if the company has 10 or fewer employees. This sick time can be used by workers to take care of themselves in times of ill health or to take care of a family member. The proposal, known as Proposition F, won with over 60 percent of the vote.

Between Proposition F’s implementation in February and the 2008 election, many others have tried to follow in San Francisco’s footsteps. California tried to apply San Francisco’s example to the entire state. The effort failed. On the east coast, Connecticut’s initiative met the same fate. Sick leave legislation in Ohio was placed on the ballot only to have it pulled after Gov. Ted Strickland (D) publicly opposed the measure. In fact, the only sick day legislation that passed in the country in this period of time was in Washington, D.C. The D.C. legislation, a product of an acrimonious legislative battle, has yet to take effect.

One has to wonder what exactly these states are waiting for. Yes, business interests are powerful. And, yes, this is not a time when politicians want to spend political capital on an issue that opponents claim will cause an increase in unemployment. But, as is often the case, the sky-is-falling noise doesn’t match the facts.

Sick leave proponents did manage to get the issue on the ballot in Milwaukee. The ballot initiative there mirrored Proposition F. As business interests again prepared to fight sick leave, studies showing the tangible benefits of taking a paid day off with the flu began to get attention from the media.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on a study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showing that Milwaukee employers could save $38 million annually by offering sick leave to 77,000 workers. The savings would come from less employment turnover along with coworkers not sharing each others’ germs. The same study also deflected anecdotal evidence that sick leave would be abused. About half of all workers offered sick leave don’t take advantage of it.

Another study from the same organization pointed to the immediate economic impact of Proposition F on San Francisco. The impact was basically nil. Despite the supposed burdensome extra costs associated with sick leave, the San Francisco economy continued to grow at a rate comparable to other areas. “In spite of the [national] economic slowdown, in the 12 months after the enactment of the sick-day policy, employment in San Francisco expanded by 1.1 percent, the same rate as in Marin and San Mateo counties, and above that in three other area counties," the study said.

Granted, San Francisco is different from Milwaukee. San Francisco is different from a lot of places. Yet the same arguments that were used to discredit Proposition F are the same arguments that have been used since its passage. Simply put, there is little evidence suggesting that sick leave costs individual businesses money in the long run. The ballot initiative in Milwaukee came away with 68 percent of the vote.

Special interests continue to do everything in their power to prevent mandatory sick leave laws from being implemented on a state or national scale. That’s why it was a surprising breath of healthy air to have a presidential candidate, Barack Obama, support an amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act. Having the support of the executive branch should only do good things for such an important piece of legislation. One just has to hope that sick leave is seen as a priority instead of a bargaining chip. Employees work too hard to risk losing money thanks to a splitting headache.

L. Russell Allen is a blogger for Pushback.

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Comments

1. hey buddy, i have also realize that…

   thanks for sharing thought

   — Paul - Dec 15, 05:12 AM - #
   
   

2. People need to stop being so greedy. The happier the people around you the happier you will be.

   — angel - Jan 23, 02:34 AM - #