PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

As cool of an idea as mandatory sick days for flu patients sounds, is it really such a good idea?

In a Portfolio.com article by Brett Chase, this is explained in summary form:  (I am quoting his article verbatim right here in italics below.  The original article page can be found here.)

As employers scramble to figure out how they’ll cover the loss of employees to swine flu, a Washington lawmaker wants to guarantee workers have enough sick time.

Representative George Miller, a California Democrat, says employers who send their workers home need to pay those people up to five days of sick leave. People who live paycheck to paycheck, can’t afford to be off work without pay, he says. Miller, who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, says he’ll hold a hearing on his bill Nov. 16.

Miller’s proposal sounds reasonable. Most big employers provide sick leave and no one wants to infect the entire workplace, right? The Centers for Disease Control says a sick employee will infect one in 10 fellow workers, the New York Times reports.

But the Times cites another interesting figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Almost 40 percent of private-sector workers have no paid sick days. Among the bottom quartile of wage earners: 63 percent do not get paid sick leave.

That’s a lot of people with an incentive to go to work sick.

Here’s my question — when he says that “the Times cites another interesting figure from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Almost 40 percent of private-sector workers have no paid sick days. Among the bottom quartile of wage earners: 63 percent do not get paid sick leave.”, does this statistic take into account the companies that have blended sick days and vacation days into personal days, or in some places better known as “paid time off” or PTO?  The trend to combine these two types of time off into PTO is well-known and has been going on for years now.  And typically, if a company offers any time off whatsoever, even if just referred to as “vacation” days, they typically will allow use of that for sickness.

So, putting in legislation that creates a temporary requirement related to swine flu is a bit dangerous.  It makes a lot of assumptions about the 40% statistic mentioned in the article.  And even if the statistics are completely accurate and not at all misleading, what does that mean for the 60% of workers who already receive sick days? Do they get 5 more? It is very difficult for companies to control and predict costs when legislation can pop up and suddenly add a new requirement on them based on any given “problem of the year”. Much has been said about the lack of “time-off” laws in the U.S. unlike other countries such as France.  I would support some type of national requirement, but a very minimal one (such as 5 business days a year after 1 year of continuous employment) and not dicing up a minimum number of sick days, a minimum number of vacation days, etc.  The problem of course with beginning to regulate time off is that it could become a slippery slope towards more unpredictable legislation.

If the couple in the photo shown at the top feels like they can kiss through a mask and not spread their illness, and if that belief is fairly representative of the population, then maybe we should simply create legislation mandating that those who show signs of illness wear blue surgical masks at their workplace all day