Anyone who has ever struggled to pay the bills with minimum wage jobs can relate to the predicament so many Vermonters are in when they or their kids get a cold or the flu. Taking a couple of days off and keeping the kids home just makes good sense, but not if it means there won’t be a paycheck at the end of the week.
As we contemplate the threat posed by the H1N1 flu virus, could anyone doubt that it serves the public good for sick people to stay home from work? Yet, many Vermonters have no choice but to work through an illness because less than half of all private sector employees are entitled to paid sick leave. Those without this benefit are generally the least able to afford losing a paid day, and are often from the service sector where they necessarily come in contact with the public the most. So we all suffer as a result of their inability to take paid sick leave when necessary. And what about the children of those workers who have no paid family leave? When a child gets sick or should visit a healthcare professional, how often does the parent have to choose between caring for the child’s immediate healthcare needs and a very necessary pay check for the entire family? Any parent can tell you that infections brought home from school are the plague of every family with school age-children. Furthermore, with an aging population that is less and less likely to be able to afford assistance outside of the family, it is more important than ever that we begin to build into employment some level of mandated family leave so that workers can meet the most basic needs for assistance of their elderly parents.
The impact of neglected illness and family stress on productivity is pretty universally recognized. Still, we haven’t yet made it mandatory that every full-time worker be entitled to a reasonable number of paid sick days and/or family leave. A bill that is currently before the Vermont House (H382) would go a long way toward correcting that deficiency. Have a look at the bill and see if you don’t think that we should be able to do this much for our fellow Vermonters.
Those most likely to pass on transmissible diseases to the largest number of people are prevented from doing the one thing that could help them avoid transmitting disease: stay home when they’re sick.
H382 would do a great deal to keep people healthier and, ironically, allow them to work more and be more productive while they’re there – since they wouldn’t be made sick by co-workers who have been exposed to infectious diseases.
I met a woman the other day who was terribly run-down – exhausted and coughing – working in an office where she provided information sessions to multiple groups of dozens of people each day in a small conference room. She told our group that her son had come home that morning after 3 days in the hospital with the flu. What are the chances she gave the flu to several people that day?
It’s ridiculous. People who are sick at work simply make others sick, too. People who have a sick child or older relative who needs their care, need to be able to provide that care without then being forced back to work just as they themselves become contagious. We’re only hurting (or sickening) ourselves by forcing others to make the financial decision to work while sick.
The downside of managing is that you have to manage people. Most are hard-working, want to succeed, and honest most of the time. Some minority (over 5%, less than 15%) are willing to take you for everything you’ve got if you’re not looking. That’s just the way some people are wired. We’d like to make a policy for the 95%…but it will be abused by the 5%, just like every other state entitlement. (I also know bosses who hold it against people who take sick time even when they’ve got it…there are bad people in every walk of life, of course).
No one wants employees to come in to work when they are very sick or have communicable diseases that will harm productivity. It’s a reasonable public policy choice to say that Vermont should pay for the public purpose of quarantine, or taking children to doctors’ appointments, etc., during the normal work period. This proposal, however, is simply a tax on employers; we are requiring them to pay people for a week and a half more work than they currently do. Something that at first is seen as a benefit will soon become a “right”, and most employees will somehow manage to take their 56 hours of sick time in one way or another. Since employee costs are at least half of a company’s costs (in many cases much more) this 3% increase in labor cost to produce the same amount will hit their bottom line by 1.5-2%. In today’s economy, you could be cutting the total profit of a company in half, or wiping it out completely…which would cost the state tax money that is quite desperately needed.
If we want to set a public policy, we should pay for it directly. A quick estimate of the cost of the state paying for 56 hours per worker per year will quickly run over $50M (probably more like $200M). But if we can see a cost-benefit analysis that spending $50M plus the extra bureaucracy of checking up on people’s excuses (another 500 state workers?) is actually cheaper than lost productivity due to workplace illness, then let’s go for it. Or, if we believe that the stress on working families is simply too great no matter what the cost, fine (but this proposal is not limited to families). Hiding the cost (and pretending that it doesn’t exist by shaming those business owners who complain) is wrong. Unfunded mandates are unfunded mandates, whatever the purpose.
I believe it was an AP story that I read in the Free Press within the last few days that has made me take more seriously the H1N1 flu threat. The report gave a number in the 80s for the number of children who have died in the United States as a result of H1N1 flu since the outbreak last spring.
Snapped my head around, lemmee tell ya.
Planning to get my regular flu shot soon, and the H1N1 vaccination as soon as it’s available for us middle-aged civilian non-medical folks. This is nothing to fool around with. And if employers don’t get that, well, they’re in for some serious and justifiable absenteeism — likely made worse by every person who comes to work feeling awful.
It might be instructive to read some accounts of the 1918 flu outbreak just to see what a lack of pandemic planning can do to a business.
NanuqFC
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying. ~ Bertrand Russell