Sick days

“Fresh off passage of a sweeping health care overhaul, the Obama administration is supporting legislation to provide mandatory paid sick leave for more than 30 million additional workers,” McClatchy newspapers reported this week.

The Healthy Families Act, sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, both Democrats from Connecticut, would require companies that have 15 or more employees to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked or up to seven sick days a year for a full-time worker.

Business groups argue convincingly that a government mandate on sick leave — especially during the recession — would hurt the very people it’s intended to help, since employers would offset the cost by cutting positions and hours.

“With the labor market still recovering, policymakers should focus on promoting job growth instead of enacting mandates that drive up operating costs and create barriers for entry-level employment,” said Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute.

Nonsense, says Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

“Yes, economic times are hard, but right now we have never seen so much productivity on behalf of our work force, so I don’t buy that argument,” Ms. Solis said. “I think there’s something unreasonable about that. In my experience, I know that people will actually be more productive in the workplace when they know that their employer is actually sensitive to what their current needs are.”

Really? “In her experience”?

What, precisely, is Ms. Solis’ “experience” working in or managing private-sector workplaces, where somebody has to count the receipts and struggle to cover payroll each week? Ms Solis’ biography indicates she’s spent most of her adult life on the public payroll. Somehow, in all those government jobs, we doubt she ever had to wait outside her employers’ office door as they decided who would be laid off that week so the rest of the paychecks wouldn’t bounce.

Yes, it’s nice if employers show reasonable consideration for employees who are legitimately sick, or who stay home to care for sick family members. Smart employers generally do so, rather than risk losing good employees. Employees can put themselves in a better position to expect such treatment if they gain the skills and experience necessary to increase their workplace value.

Even worse, the one-size-fits-all mandate would undermine employers such as Philip Derrow, president of the Ohio Transmission Corp. in Columbus, Ohio, who got rid of vacation and sick days for his 315 employees and instead provides two weeks of “paid time off” that they can use for vacations, sick leave or other personal reasons. He said most employers would prefer the same flexibility.

“We treat our employees as adults. The very thought that the federal government would force me to ask my adult employees to tell me when they’re sick is offensive at every level,” Mr. Derrow says. “It’s none of my business.”