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According to National Partners, 48 percent of Americans do not receive paid sick days from their employers, but this may change if a new piece of legislation proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell, D-Vassalboro, passes in the Maine legislature.
L.D. 2134, if passed, would produce a law requiring all Maine businesses with 25 or more employees to provide earned sick time to their employees, whether full- or part-time, at a rate of one hour per 40 hours worked. Smaller businesses would provide fewer hours.
Mitchell said at a press conference that Mainers are “being told to stay home if we’re sick, but that is a cruel piece of advice if you don’t have sick time.”
Low wage workers are more likely than higher-wage workers not to have paid sick days, making it even harder to miss much-needed hours at work. Recent AFL-CIO/Hart research shows that only 46 percent of young workers aged 18 to 30 years old (including students) who make less than $30,000 per year have paid sick leave — 30 percent less likely than higher-wage young workers.
Only 31 percent of young workers (including students) make enough money to cover their bills and save any money at all — a 22 percent decrease since 1999. It’s clear every cent is important.
Mainers are being forced to choose between taking care of themselves and earning enough money to pay the bills. When they make the choice to go to work, they risk spreading illness to their coworkers. Folks who work with the public put even more people at risk. Paid sick days would reduce these risks by making the choice between staying home and going to work sick a much easier one to make.
We must remember there are currenty an estimated 47 million uninsured people in the United States. Many of these people are faced with the tandem problems of inability to afford health care and inability to afford missing hours at work.
Detractors are sure to say that employers cannot afford paid sick days, but pitching in an hour in exchange for 40 worked to ensure your workers aren’t putting each other or the public at risk is a small price, especially for big employers.
It’s not an entirely novel idea. In 2007, San Francisco passed an ordinance requiring all employers offer all employees paid sick time.
According to a UC Berkeley study, despite the 2007 paid sick leave ordinance and the 2008 employer-provided health care mandate, “the city’s growth rate across all employment sectors was similar to or better than other Bay Area counties. While San Francisco saw its employment rate shrink due to the struggling economy, it actually shrank less than other counties,” wrote Heather Knight in The San Francisco Chronicle in August.
The argument that placing higher expectations on our employers will ruin businesses is the same low-road argument that was used to fight child labor laws and overtime pay in the past. These arguments rely not only on the idea that businesses can’t afford to take care of their workers, but that they shouldn’t be expected to.
Businesses that take care of their employees are sure to gain rewards in the increased productivity that will result from the necessarily fewer total sick days taken as a result of employees staying home and not infecting each other.
Sen. Mitchell is right to say advising someone with no sick time to stay home is cruel. Mainers — and no one else for that matter — shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their bills.
Mario Moretto is opinion editor for The Maine Campus.
