When I was growing up I thought it was my Uncle Frank who said, “most of day’s work is done by people who don’t feel very well that day.†In my family’s lexicon, this meant “life is hard†and “deal with it.â€Â (Later I learned it was Eleanor Roosevelt; but maybe she was quoting Uncle Frank?)
Here’s what the saying means now: most of a day’s work is done by people who don’t have adequate paid sick leave (not to mention decent health insurance). Our buddies at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) just published a report, “Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries,†that will, well, make you sick. Here’s the abstract:
This report finds that the U.S. is the only country among 22 countries ranked highly in terms of economic and human development that does not guarantee that workers receive paid sick days or paid sick leave. Under current U.S. labor law, employers are not required to provide short-term paid sick days or longer-term paid sick leave. By relying solely on voluntary employer policies to provide paid sick days or leave to employees, tens of millions of U.S. workers are without paid sick days or leave. As a result, each year millions of American workers go to work sick, lowering productivity and potentially spreading illness to their coworkers and customers.
The report couldn’t be more timely, as our swine flu anxiety plateaus out into recession’s hot summer. Workers under increasingly enormous economic stress cannot afford to take off when they are ill. “The economic costs of a serious flu outbreak are potentially enormous,” said lead report author Jody Heymann, Director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University. Her sentiment, and the report’s, were reflected in a New York Times editorial supporting the report’s call to provide workers with paid sick days. Now.
I know, I know. We can’t afford it. Jeepers, ya’ll, we’d really like to help, but we just can’t afford it. Hard times, high unemployment. I hear ya’ out there, and thank goodness for you smart free marketeers who can help us sort out priorities rationally. I mean, heck of a job on that financial sector!
Oh wait, this just in: CEPR did a cool little follow up to “Contagion Nation.†The very title, “Paid Sick Days Don’t Cause Unemployment,†tells the story. But let me recap: The researchers had already shown that availability of sick days doesn’t give countries a higher unemployment rate, nor does it make countries less competitive. But this time, they asked, what about the amount of paid sick days? Does that make a difference? The answer is no. Paid sick days don’t hurt employment–and they don’t help. They have no influence one way or another on unemployment. But, as Dr. Heymann and colleagues explain in “Contagion Nationâ€:
A substantial body of research has shown that in addition to the obvious health and economic costs imposed on employees by the lack of paid sick days or leave, significant costs result as well for employers. Workers who go to work while sick stay sick longer, lower their productivity as well as that of their coworkers, and can spread their illnesses to coworkers and customers.
The way things are, I don’t feel so good. But reading papers like this is like a shot in the arm. Let’s make sure this work reaches legislators. The National Partnership for Women and Families can hook you up here with a variety of ways to take action, including urging your members of Congress to support the Healthy Families Act, which guarantees workers a minimum of seven days of paid sick leave. (And send them both CEPR papers!)
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NICE WORK: Shamming Sick Days? No. Shamming Data? Yes. | Girl with Pen — November 2, 2009
[...] CEPR senior economist John Schmitt, co-author of a report on paid sick leave in the US and Europe earlier this year, said not so fast! At noapparentmotive.org, Schmitt took issue in two ways: first, as his CEPR report, Contagion Nation, pointed out, the current system of no paid sick leave in the United States provides incentive for people to go to work sick. You see, if we measure cost, we have to measure the cost of a policy of no paid sick leave as well as the cost of some paid sick leave. You can read more about Contagion Nation at girlwpen here. [...]