Saturday, April 21, 2007 3:44 AM
By Sherri Williams
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Steven White sometimes goes to work with a pain in his body because he's not paid for sick days. He figures it's better than a pain in his wallet.
"It's been rough, but you have to work your way through it," said White, 51, who has been a sanitation worker at a Columbus condiment company for five years. "You do get sick and have family emergencies."
A union-supported effort to provide seven paid sick days for full-time employees in Ohio would help workers such as White. However, business associations think the extra days will only hurt companies' bottom lines and not provide workers with any more dollars.
The Ohio Healthy Families Act, backed by Service Employees International Union District 1199, would require employers with 25 or more workers to provide each of them with at least seven paid sick days a year. Part-timers would be able to earn a pro-rated amount of sick time.
Nearly half of the state's workers, 42 percent of part-time and full-time employees, have no sick days, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, said Jennifer Farmer, a spokeswoman for the union.
"Ohioans should not have to choose between recovering when they are ill and a paycheck," Farmer said. "They should be able to take care of their families without their jobs being compromised."
NewsBut the measure would burden small businesses, which have already started paying a higher minimum wage, and cause them to raise the cost of goods and services, said Tom Jackson, president and chief executive officer of the Ohio Grocers Association.
"This is not the way we turn around Ohio," he said, borrowing the phrase from Gov. Ted Strickland's plan to revive the state's economy. "Organized labor's plan is not one that's going to turn around Ohio. What it's going to do is cost jobs and cost benefits."
Paid sick days are a benefit that workers should have, but they might have to compromise to get them, said Marcus Sandver, professor of management and human resources at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.
"From a humanitarian point of view, I think it makes a lot of sense and it's a good idea, but from an economic point of view, somebody is going to have to pay the bill," Sandver said.
But Farmer said that the seven sick days could cut costs for employers and boost morale and productivity because fewer ill employees would be working under pressure and infecting others.
The union has begun the process to have a petition approved so it can collect the 120,600 signatures of registered voters needed to introduce the "initiated statute" to the General Assembly in January. Legislators will have four months to act on it. If the union is dissatisfied with that action, it could try to collect enough signatures to place the measure on the November 2008 ballot.
If it is successful, businesses would be burdened with a week's worth of sick pay as well as the cost of replacement workers and lost productivity, said Ty Pine, state legislative director for the National Federation of Independent Business of Ohio.
It's also unnecessary, Pine said, because many employers offer some type of sick pay, and additional days would only shift benefits, not add to them. It also could lower starting pay.
"There is a finite number of resources an employer can give in a benefits package," he said. "They are going to have to work with the same amount of revenue and give out the same amount of benefits."
Still, White said he hopes employers will be required to give workers paid sick days because illness and expenses are a part of life.
"I have to go to work," White said. "I do have bills, and they won't stop coming."
Posted by SickDaysOhio.org on June 13, 2007
Comments
Posted by Jack at June 15, 2007 1:52 PM
Great idea...glad they're doing this.
jq