Obama Administration Endorses Paid Sick Leave
It’s not quite the high-profile issue that health care or climate change is, but there’s been some interesting developments recently on the quest to get paid sick leave for all of America’s workers. The fact that many American workers get no sick leave whatsoever is rarely discussed in elite circles, most likely because, as Steven Greenhouse has highlighted with this chart, the phenomenon is quite class bound:
Advocates for changing the situation have made headway in terms of linking the issue to fears about the spread of H1N1 flu. Does it really serve even the interests of prosperous professionals to live in a country where low-wage food service workers, for example, are likely to show up at work while sick and infect everyone else? This was discussed at a recent CAP panel featuring, among others, Vice President Joe Biden and Domestic Policy Council chief Melody Barnes where they seemed generally supportive. But things took another important step forward today in the somewhat obscure venue of the Senate HELP Committee’s Subcommittee on Children and Families where Seth Harris, Deputy Secretary from the Labor Department, came to offer a strong statement of support for paid sick leave:
In conclusion, it is clear that while much has been done to help prepare for a national health emergency like 2009 H1N1, more is needed to help protect the economic security of working families who must choose between a pay check and their health and the health of their families. That is why the Administration supports the Healthy Families Act and other proposals that advance workplace flexibility and protect the income and security of workers. I appreciate your time today, and I am happy to answer any questions you may have.
It’s worth observing that this bill would, among other things, be a specific boon to parents since it would allow you to take sick leave in order to take care of a sick child. You’d think that might be the kind of thing “pro-family” conservatives would be interested in along with us godless socialists.
43 Responses to “Obama Administration Endorses Paid Sick Leave”
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November 10th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Hell.. YES! Even more burdens on business and disincentives to hire! What else do Democrats have in their bag of tricks to keep the economy in a recession??
November 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Yeah, no one is against sick leave, but do you you even think about how this affects employment?
November 10th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Oh, Brad. I am sure more knowledgeable people will jump all over you, but I’ll never understand why the “pro-business” community think they can make more money with a sick workforce.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
“The fact that many American workers get no sick leave whatsoever is rarely discussed in elite circles, most likely because, as Steven Greenhouse has highlighted with this chart, the phenomenon is quite class bound.”
This is a good point which does not get discussed nearly enough, as it extends to many other class issues. Even in a society with substantial racism, sexism, or even anti-religious sentiment, most people know or work with someone of a different race, sex, or religion than them. But given how much influence money has in how we structure our lives, the same is not true of class. Our income determines where we live, where we work, and what we spend our leisure time doing. And this means that, no matter what class we are, we are always going to have a limited perspective on other classes. Middle class Americans, for instance, tend to live among other middle class people, work with other middle class people, and recreate with other middle class people.
All of this points to an significant structural problem in imagining other people and doing the right thing by them, and we should be doing more to counteract it, even if indirectly. It’s sad that even someone who sympathizes with the working poor, like Barbara Ehrenreich, had to “go undercover” to see what it’s like to be poor; she couldn’t just ask those she knows, since it’s likely she doesn’t have many poor friends.
-Dan
November 10th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I actually know a couple people who’ve been fired because they got sick, got approval from the boss to take the day off, and then came back into work only to find out that the boss’s boss doesn’t approve of sick days. In the short term, some managers genuinely feel like they get an advantage on their less-brutal competitors. In the long term, companies with policies like this are shooting themselves in the foot with increased hiring costs, but the market isn’t solving the problem, and the result is needless suffering.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Most real world businesses I have worked at over the past five years actually want sick employees to stay home so they will not make everyone else in the office sick. Nowadays these sick employees can still actually do some of their work from home.
At my office, part of the contingency planning for an H1N1 pandemic consisted of figuring out how long we could operate if no one actually came to work.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Even more burdens on business and disincentives to hire!
Brad’s pining for the days when good honest plantation owners could buy their workforce in the market square.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Yeah, no one is against sick leave, but do you you even think about how this affects employment?
Please, tell us how it would affect employment. And be sure to back up your assertions with empirical evidence.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I’m in favor of such a law, as the social benefit would be great. However, it WOULD impose a significant burden on employers who do not currently offer sick leave. For example, in an office environment, it is relatively easy to cover for an absent employee, so you would expect sick leave to be more prevalent there. Contra that with an “assembly-line” type workplace environment, and you see that an absent employee could significantly slow down work, unless a duplicate employee is present every shift to cover for that eventuality. Which increases costs. I would also expect that in plaintiffs lawsuits against employers, the prevailing ex-employee would have a right to accumulated sick leave, much as they do now with accumulated annual leave.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I’m willing to pay a few extra pennies for my trip through the Applebee’s salad bar to cover sick leave so the guy who usually does the prep work can stay home when he’s sick and still make rent.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Brad –
Paid sick days are good for business. Sick workers are unproductive, and by infecting their colleagues, make the workers around them unproductive.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Market-killing bastards. I predict: their next law will declare French the official language. Enslaved masses, arise, arise!
November 10th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Yeah, no one is against sick leave, but do you you even think about how this affects employment?
Not to mention laws against child labor and slavery! There are just too many communist burdens on America’s business class.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Sick days are good for some businesses, and those businesses generally already provide them.
For lower income businesses, when the workers are not especially motivated beyond the hourly wage, sick days are often seen as excuses to not come into work. Making those sick days paid would lessen productivity. It would also provide a disincentive to hire more workers, if those workers can be marginally less productive. Yes, it is hard to put a number on it, but it would trade off with some employment. Maybe that tradeoff is worth it, but if so admit that you want less people to be employed so that those who are can have sick days.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
The shocking thing for me in that graph is that 12% of high wage earners do not have paid sick leave.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
DC: the flaw in your argument is that “assembly-line” type jobs, in practice, tend to offer very generous sick leave. Part of that is because of unions. But part of it is that (1) absent employees are usually easy to replace with guys looking for overtime shifts, and (2) a worker who is too sick to safely operate heavy machinery can do some really epic damage, on a magnitude that most office workers can hardly imagine.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
@15, they use their golf-days.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
the flaw in your argument is that “assembly-line” type jobs, in practice, tend to offer very generous sick leave.
Yep. Among the bottom wage percentile? Food service and similar (cinema and casino workers, concessions and ticket sellers); also cleaners, home care workers, child care workers.
A lot of those jobs have been subcontracted out to agencies, which is why you have a culture where if you don’t show up because you’re sick, you’re at risk of losing your job. They’re also ones where working sick creates a potential public health risk.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
A lot of those jobs have been subcontracted out to agencies, which is why you have a culture where if you don’t show up because you’re sick, you’re at risk of losing your job. They’re also ones where working sick creates a potential public health risk.
There’s an episode in Nickel and Dimed where one of the maids badly hurts her ankle, can’t put her weight on it, and everyone can’t understand why Ehrenreich is making such a big fuss about how she should go home. According to this interview the boss was lecturing her about taking a couple Excedrin and “working through it.”
November 10th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
No need for federal legislation; start legislative efforts at the state level. Progressive states could enact mandatory sick pay, reap the benefits of a healthier and more prosperous citizenry, and regressive states would be pressured by their citizens to follow suit.
Problem solved!
November 10th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Let me start by saying that I would be in favor of this sort of regulation.
The trouble is that the costs will be imposed on the market participant with the least bargaining power. In this case, that would be low wage workers.
Especially in an economic downturn where it is easy to replace employees, the most likely result of such regulation would be lower wages for low income workers, as businesses tried to make up for the lost days of productivity.
As I said at the beginning, I think this sort of regulation is worth it on public health grounds alone, but I doubt its long term effect on the wages of the working poor will be positive.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
@20 – totally agree. This looks like a job for laboratories of democracy. However, in Yglesias-land, there is no job too big or too small for federal action.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I think paid sick leave is a great idea for all of the above reasons. However, it makes more sense for society as a whole to assume the risk from sickness rather than individual employers, for two reasons: 1. mandatory sick leave paid by employers gives socially-harmful incentives to those employers to, for example, screen potential employees for health risks 2. it’s another arbitrary factor influencing the success and failure of a business, and we want businesses to succeed and fail based on their ability to provide valuable services at good prices, not on the happenstance of their employees’ health.
Matt talks a lot about hidden taxes and I think that’s relevant here. Let’s make the taxes explicit and have government cover paid sick leave.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Roader Says:
November 10th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
No need for federal legislation; start legislative efforts at the state level. Progressive states could enact mandatory sick pay, reap the benefits of a healthier and more prosperous citizenry, and regressive states would be pressured by their citizens to follow suit.
Problem solved!
========================================================
Good question. How come none of the progressive states that Dems have governed for years have laws like this?
November 10th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
In Europe paid sick leave is the law and the businesses can and do compete. There must be other reasons why Americans can’t pay decent wages, paid leave and sick leave, paid maternity leave, and still claim they can’t compete. To listen to them you would think only if labor is free can they make it. If all have to provide sick-leave it is a level playing field, what is the problem?
November 10th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
#24, they have to compete with right to work states like Texas.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
renate Says:
November 10th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
#24, they have to compete with right to work states like Texas.
============================================================
That didn’t stop them from enacting their own minimum wage laws bringing their rates far above the federal minimum wage the right to work states followed. In most cases that was far above the approx. 2% premium to add to labor with five days sick leave
November 10th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
@StevenAttewell:Paid sick days are good for business. Sick workers are unproductive, and by infecting their colleagues, make the workers around them unproductive.
So all those businesses that don’t offer paid sick time are very poorly run since they’re missing out on all that additional productivity. Someone ought to start competing businesses and put them out of business with the superior productivity of a healthier workforce.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
[...] loud and clear, from the Deputy Secretary of the Labor Department, Seth Harris. As Matthew Yglesias notes in his blog over at Think Progress, Mr. Harris presented testimony on the Healthy Families Act and said: In conclusion, it is clear [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Frankly, I’m suspicious of the above arguments that sick employees are really that less productive. For the most part, if you feel ill in the morning, you just take a few pills and show up at work, do your job, and go home, feeling lousy all the time. But really, folks: you can do your job and feel lousy at the same time. The real reason most of us support the legislation is that it’s what an enlightened culture provides to its employees. Not because it’s going to produce net health and efficiency benefits.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Re: Yeah, no one is against sick leave, but do you you even think about how this affects employment?
Why should it have any effect on it at all? When someone is out a coworker covers for him or her. You only have to hire a replacement if the person is going to be out long term. Most workplaces have enough slack they can absorb an employee being out a day
Re: I actually know a couple people who’ve been fired because they got sick
That’s against the law, and the workers should have sued. Businesses don’t have to pay sick time, but they do have to grant it (both the ADA and the family Medical Leave act requiures this).
Re: they have to compete with right to work states like Texas.
Most low wage work is point-of-service work. So they are competing with businesses just down the street, not in Texas (unless that’s where they are located)
November 10th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
ADA (employment portion) only cover employers with more than 15 employees, and FMLA only cover employers with more than 50 employees.
As more and more larger employers shedding employees, more and more people are falling out of ADA and FMLA coverage.
I usually don’t give too much credence to people threaten to go “GALT,” but I do know small business owners who refuse to expand beyond those thresholds.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Some employers prefer to give their employees all their days off as one batch rather than segregating them into “sick days” and “vacation.” You can safely assume those 12% simply have more “vacation” days.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Some employers prefer to give their employees all their days off as one batch rather than segregating them into “sick days” and “vacation.” You can safely assume those 12% simply have more “vacation” days.
That’s what they do where I work.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Allowing full-time workers who have demonstrated a satisfactory work ethic to stay home when they are sick with communicable or debilitating diseases without having to worry about making the rent or cutting back on food is absolutely necessary to the dignity of working people. Treat the workers without dignity, like fungible and discardable commodities, and they will treat their jobs the same way.
Oh, and any business (and I can’t imagine small businesses would be much affected) that whines that they can’t afford to do it or that workers will take advantage should be laughed out of the room and/or told to hire and make an investment in better workers.
November 10th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
You’d think that might be the kind of thing “pro-family” conservatives would be interested in along with us godless socialists.
Not so much, because “pro-family” conservatives are the ones that think all mothers should be stay-at-home moms.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
That’s funny.
November 11th, 2009 at 7:35 am
According to ChartsBin.com statistics “Percentage of Wages Paid During Maternity Leave around the World” – The governments of Australia and United States provide some of the world’s weakest maternity leave benefits.
Length of Maternity Leave around the World All moms-to-be might consider a move to Sweden. They providing 480 day with 80% paid.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:23 am
I think that this could be one of the best things that comes from all the H1N1 hype. (Well, that, and pregnant women and children getting vaccinated.) In fact, I may have been encouraging fear of H1N1 being transmitted at restaurants simply to elevate this concern.
November 11th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Where’s the mandatory paid vacation? That’s what I want to know.
Mandatory paid sick leave should absolutely happen. I can’t see the other side of it.
I’m voting for any candidate that promises he will advance mandatory paid vacation.
[I get it at my work but strongly believe everyone should have it plus I favor much more vacation than Americans currently get - preferably mandated.]
November 11th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
[...] leave right now is a privilege based on socioeconomic class. That should not be the case. Matt Yglesias comments: Advocates for changing the situation have made headway in terms of linking the issue to fears [...]
November 11th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Of course not. There is no need for Dad to take off work to care for a sick child because Mom should be home anyway.
November 16th, 2009 at 10:24 am
[...] Obama Administration Endorses Paid Sick Leave (Yglesias) [...]