Companies might have different standards for sickness, or for taking off. They might give you extra vacation days, and allow you to use them however you like. Having someone verify that you are sick in order to take off sounds really stupid.

Meanwhile, with the internet, there are a lot of non-traditional companies where people work from home. How do these people take their benefit?

In more traditional settings, they might use other strategies, like allowing people to trade work hours or make up their time later.

All of this would be much more difficult with a government mandated policy.

An estimate of an average number of sick days that a company in a particular business should have could be made from public health records, and this could be the basis of predicting amounts of sick days and sick leave. Like many governmental regulations, these need not be canonized in statute but could be left to Department of Labor or HHS to specify year after year.

Indeed, it seems to me that the only market true approach to the problem is to fire employees immediately who are sick, thus protecting the company from productivity losses of any kind.

Obviously, that’s silly, especially for knowledge-based or skill-based industries. It might make sense for businesses which use unskilled labor. No doubt some do this kind of thing.

I think we should simply apply a social cost to such companies, and stigmatize them. They are a blemish on our national pride.

Atul Gawande wrote a nice piece in the New Yorker a while back on the near impossibility of preventing exposure to the trail of virus-laden snot cold sufferers smear over themselves and everything they touch (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/03/11/020311fa_fact_gawande).

So infecting your co-workers also means infecting the people they live with and commute with. I’m sure these folks (and *their* employers, co-workers, customers, teachers, etc.) would appreciate less free-riding on the public health investments of others by employers who try to eke 100% performance out of workers operating at 10% capacity.

As for the argument that we should simply direct sick people to wear protective masks to work (as is common in Japan), the evidence suggests that this tactic is ineffective: http://www.slate.com/id/2217045/.

“Since corporations have been unable or unwilling to fix this obvious problem, it is necessary for the government to step in and regulate. If the economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that private enterprise is not some sort of magic potion to cure all ills, but rather a imperfect system that requires government intervention in order for it to operate properly.”

Firstly many of the corporations you talk about already DO offer sick days and sick leave. If you don’t have it at your job then you probably don’t have a very good job which is who’s fault exactly?

No one has a gun to anyone’s head forcing them to work. That’s the bottom line. People need to take responsibility for themselves. If your company doesn’t offer sick days or sick leave I’ll advise two things:

1) Rainy day fund (i.e. savings!) for when you need time off from sickness and won’t be making money.

2) Disability insurance for anything very serious.

You see was that so difficult?

People need to stop crying like babies asking for Mama and Papa government to “fix” everything with regulations and laws.

For every 1 government regulation that has had positive effects I can name you 10 that have been complete failures.

We are due for a flu epidemic and the best way to spread flu (and other less serious air borne diseases) is to financially pressure people to go to work when they are sick. That means sick people on public transit, sick children at daycare and at school, sick people at work. Most importantly, it means sick and infectious people preparing and serving your food at restaurants and fast food outlets.

People are not machines. Yes, the economy and money are important but people are animals and animals, when worked too hard or put under too much stress or put into contact with other sick animals, get sick. The economic cost of a greater number of sick people over time as well as a greater risk of flu epidemics going out of control ought to be equal to or greater than the cost of sick days. Most if not all the countries listed on the graph have an overall standard of living (beyond simply the size of one’s pay packet) that is greater than that of the average American. Does this not tell you something? You have the right to work sick but you do not have the right to make everybody else sick just because you insist on working when your body is shutting down.

Since corporations have been unable or unwilling to fix this obvious problem, it is necessary for the government to step in and regulate. If the economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that private enterprise is not some sort of magic potion to cure all ills, but rather a imperfect system that requires government intervention in order for it to operate properly.

“There are undoubtedly companies who would like to do this, but who cannot because their competitors don’t, and so they would be left at a comparative disadvantage”

A company offering sick days and sick leave as part of their benefit package HAS a competitive advantage in that they can hire the best workers since they offer a better employment package (assuming the pay is equal). With better employees the company can be more profitable etc. etc.

So I don’t see how offering this actually hurts. The ONLY case is in that of low skilled workers (i.e. no skills) were the cheapness of the labor is the only criterion on which selection is made. So here the solution is not to mandate sick days or sick leave, if people want these types of perks they need to seek better employment and for that they need to improve their skill set etc.

“If all businesses are required to do this, then all of the costs will be transferred to society through higher prices, and there will be no burden at all.”

What do you mean “no burden at all”! You just said the preceding sentence that “the costs will be transferred to society”, that is the burden!

If a manufacturing plant in the US has to maintain a certain minimum wage, provide health care to its workers, and offer sick days and sick leave and daycare and massage treatments and etc. etc.

How long will these manufacturing jobs stay in America? Not very!

Your employment package (salaray + benefits)is directly commensurate with the value you add. Thus low skilled workers (of which supply is great and value added is small) will have less benefits than high skilled workers.

Is this unfair? Well…no! Everyone is entitled to what they’ve earned not what the believe they “should” be entitled to.

This problem is exactly analogous to GM and the UAW. The UAW wants benefits that are NOT commensurate with the value they add to the product. That along with managerial incompetence destroyed the automaker.

Firstly your use of unlikely hypothetical situations doesn’t bode well for your argument.

Secondly, I find it incredible that people feel so strongly that this is a problem. There has not been any evidence showing that the fact that the US government doesn’t mandate paid sick days or sick leave makes us any less healthy.

Where is that evidence?

Thirdly, do you expect me to have sympathy because you choose, completely willingly (or has someone enslaved you), to work at a job that doesn’t offer the benefits you feel that you deserve? Well, I cannot feel sympathy for people who have made decisions in their lives and then complain of the outcomes of those decisions.

If you truly don’t like your job and you feel you are worth more then you should seek other forms of employment. Or perhaps better yet be your own boss. Start a business and offer your employees 100 sick days a year or whatever you’d like.

My only opinion on this matter is that I don’t believe the Gov. should be writing laws concerning this issue. We shouldn’t look to those countries on that chart as good examples of how to run ours.

I thought everything required government mandates, laws, regulation, etc!

I feel this way because my income is adversely affected when I take time off.

Same for bigger businesses – but employees, who have paid sick days, do not feel the burden.

The government may not guarantee either sick leave or sick days – but in my work, most of my clients offer sick days. Those on the lower end of the spectrum, who work at Walmart, etc., may not get the sick days. But I’m not sure the government needs to poke its nose into that issue.

I though that the FMLA existed to help people through long-term medical situations – no?