These Days Are Sick

Last week, the Philadelphia City Council approved Bill No. 080474-AA mandating Philadelphia employers to provide paid sick leave to their employees. For employers with 10 or more employees, the requirement is to provide 7 paid sick days per year. For employers with 6 to 10, the requirement is 4 days per year. The sick days could be used for the employee's own illness or to care for a sick family member.

Sounds reasonable, right? Not according to the email I received from SHRM Advocacy asking me to write to Mayor Nutter to request he veto this legislation.

Because I almost never touch on political landmines on this blog, I'm deferring my opinion of the Philadelphia Council's decision at this point. Instead, I turn my attention to dissecting the email I received which I have dubbed, SHRM-a-ganda.

In creating the compliment sandwich, the SHRM argument begins by stating, "paid sick leave is one of the many benefits that employers voluntarily provide to recruit and retain individuals, as well as promote employee health and morale." But this bill works against this by having a "'one size fits all' approach that would restrict an HR professional's ability to design compensation and benefit packages tailored for employees."
What I hear: it's a good benefit, but don't shove it down employers' throats. Thus, forcing good benefits is bad.

To qualify why this good benefit is bad, the email continues with the following points:

"Mandated paid leave would come at a significant cost to Philadelphia employers, and these costs would have to be made up elsewhere-perhaps through reduced wages or reductions in other paid benefits to employers"
What I hear: Employers are either so callous, greedy, or foolish that if forced to do this, they will do less to retain their employees by removing benefits.

"Neighboring Pennsylvania counties and other states have no such requirement to do so." This will hamper "efforts to attract new business to the City and would put our businesses at a competitive disadvantage."
What I hear: Even though Pennsylvania is already ranked very low by the National Chamber Of Commerce as a state to do business in, this doesn't help. It doesn't help to create benefits that make employees happier which creates more productivity and innovation.

"Could have a chilling effect on Philadelphia employers' ability to craft creative leave policies that provide employees with an effective work/life balance."
What I hear: Employers are dumb people who become stifled creatively when given a benchmark to begin creating policies.

"Could have the negative effect of providing an incentive for abuse with concomitant operational and overtime costs."
What I hear: Employees cannot be trusted. If given an inch, they will take a mile.

To counteract even further SHRM's "Everything Will Turn Out Bad" email, there are some interesting reasons for enacting this bill:

• "Approximately 44% of workers in the Philadelphia area do not have paid sick days"
• Providing the benefit "will ensure a healthier and more productive workforce" and "have a positive effect on the public health ... lessening [employees] recovery time and reducing the likelihood of spreading illness."
• "Employers who provide paid sick days have greater employee retention" (What cost more: giving a few sick days or hiring a new employee?) 
• "Employees frequently lose their jobs or are disciplined with suspensions or demerits for sick days."
• "Workers in jobs with high public contact, such as service workers and restaurant workers, are very unlikely to have paid sick days."
• "Many employers would like to provide their workers with paid sick days but fear being at a competitive disadvantage because other employers do not."

Furthermore, the bill is a well written policy reasonably defining "employee", the accrual and carryover system, the hows and whys of what is sick leave, and the retaliatory provisions.

After examining the bill, I'm not sure what caused SHRM to revert to rabble-rousing mode. Even though I'm keeping my opinion to myself as to whether I approve of the bill, I'm not seeing it as a horrible idea. A horrible idea is SHRM Advocacy sending caustic emails that don't present more facts on the purpose behind the bill and what the bill contains. Ironically enough, reading emails like that makes me so sick, I may have to take a day off.