A celebration after a large company’s annual meeting may mean a big thing is about to happen: a large number of employees are likely to be infected with influenza, because the influenza virus between them will spread rapidly. In a restaurant’s back-kitchen lounge, a sneeze by a staff member may cause others to get stuffy for weeks and even fever. Every year, and especially this season, this common scenario forces many of us to fail to work properly. But those who spread the pathogen of the colleagues are often because there is no paid sick leave was so.
According to data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013, even one of the two major symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting: Norwalk virus infection, one in five restaurant workers still choose to punch in time to work, which can easily lead to Nausea caused the virus about half of the United States about food-borne diseases. These dangerous microorganisms into the work environment so that consumers are threatened the health of the body, but also infected with other staff, leading to a large number of employers are facing the embarrassment of absenteeism. At the time of the 2009 National Swine Flu outbreak, according to the American Women’s Policy Institute, about 8 million infected American adults work as usual, and these people are more likely to infect an additional 7 million adults, Half of the 26 million adults infected with swine flu in those years.
Most people who choose to go to work just because they can not rest at ease at home. In the United States, about 75% of part-time employees and 25% of full-time employees are not entitled to paid sick leave benefits. And now, the time has changed. We need to increase the number of people who can enjoy this benefit through the relevant laws.
Forcing people with flu or stomach trouble to come to work often tend to bring more absences, rather than less. According to a federal fund report in 2005, those who did not pay sick leave to see a doctor to see a doctor than those who have this benefit on average more than a year to sick 6 days or more. And according to an article published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in 2004, it is expected that the total number of sick workers will cause about 18% to 60% of the productivity decline. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also showed that staff without paid sick leave systems were more likely to be injured in work and less likely to receive preventive health screening for cancer.
Practical experience shows that the paid sick leave system does not harm work. 16 cities in the United States, as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts and California, have passed laws requiring staff members to take 1 hour of paid sick leave after every 30 working hours. A survey in Washington, DC, in 2013 showed that there was no evidence that the five-year paid sick leave law had harmed business interests. In the West Coast, San Francisco has consistently outperformed other Bay Area cities in employment growth since the introduction of paid sickness regulations in 2007. The cost to implement this policy is that employers will endure paying a higher base salary for those who use paid sick leave. While the productivity and public health benefits outweigh these costs.
Many opponents of the paid sickness law argue that healthy workers abuse this benefit, leading to a large number of absenteeism, but a study of the Connecticut study by the Center for Economic Policy Research shows that this concern is unfounded. Nonetheless, the undue fear of a large number of absenteeism has indeed rejected many proposals for establishing a minimum paid sick leave. The Government and the public should abide by science rather than worrying for no reason, and from now on, to fight for paid sick leave. This is good for all of us.
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