This is the kind of story that makes me want to pull my hair out:
New York City is poised to mandate that thousands of companies provide paid time off for sick employees, bolstering a national movement that has been resisted by wary business leaders.
A legislative compromise reached on Thursday night represents a raw display of political muscle by a coalition of labor unions and liberal activists who overcame fierce objections from New York’s business-minded mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, and his allies in the corporate world.
The deal required a high-profile concession from a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Bloomberg, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who had single-handedly blocked action on the sick-leave issue for three years, arguing that it would inflict damage on the city’s fragile economy.
The legislation would eventually force companies with at least 15 employees to give full-time workers five compensated days off a year when they are ill, a requirement that advocates said would allow much of the city’s labor force to stay home from work without fear of losing a day’s wage — or worse, a job. The advocates said the legislation would provide paid sick leave for one million New Yorkers who do not currently have such benefits.
But to the disappointment of those who pushed for a more sweeping version of the legislation, New York City’s mandate would not take effect until spring 2014, and for the first 18 months, it would apply only to businesses with 20 or more employees, according to people involved in the negotiations.
The measure is subject to a vote by the City Council. Mr. Bloomberg is expected to veto the measure, but there is enough support on the Council to override his veto.
My god. What an onerous fucking concession. People who hire people will have to pay them up to FIVE (5) whole fucking days. Can you imagine that? When people get sick, they will actually be able to go to the doctor and get themselves healthy without losing their jobs. The horror. How will capitalism survive with free-loading employees whose wages have been stagnant for three decades able to take a day or two off when they have strep throat or the yearly flu (since anyone pissed off about this law is most assuredly not providing health care or flu shots)? Can our economy recover with this kind of regulation?
The reason I want to scream is because this is being portrayed as a labor “victory.” If this is a victory, allowing sick people to not get fired, the power of unions is radically overstated.
Fucking fascist Bloomberg of course was against this. He just wants to make sure with the 9 bucks an hour you make living in NY you don’t spend it on high calorie drinks.
All of these people need to see a guillotine.
Xecky Gilchrist
Where did you find a newspaper from 1897?
Wait, what? THIS year?
The Moar You Know
Makers don’t get sick.
Takers, looters and moochers do.
Cacti
The food service industry is one of the worst for not giving paid sick leave.
Comforting to know that one or more sick people have probably been prepping, cooking, and/or serving your meal, no?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Unions have been weakened enough that labor is essentially starting over. Hell, at least no one was killed by the National Guard trying to get those five days.
Two minimum laws I would pass are $12/hr minimum wage and an end to right-to-work laws. We could reduce the amount of taxes on social services that way. It would be a win for everyone except slave owners.
ruemara
5 fucking days. Oh the humanity. Giving those ungrateful
slavesserfs 5 MOTHERFUCKING DAYS to be ill. With pay. Meanwhile, CEO pay careens through the roof. But those 5 fucking days that probably amount to no more than $200 per worker, those are killing businesses. Fuck this country.DH
Give credit to perhaps future Mayor of New York Quinn. She managed to block even this for 3 FUCKING YEARS.
And we call ourselves the Human Race
Villago Delenda Est
Not just see it, but experience its utility in a profound way.
I might add that this is fucking commonsense…an incentive to prevent the further degradation of the workplace by communicable disease. It should improve productivity by not creating a situation where people feel compelled to bring their bug with them to the factory floor or office and share the love with their fellow employees.
As for the employers, well, they asked for it, being sick fuckers already.
The Moar You Know
@Villago Delenda Est: Do executioners get sick days?
BerkleeyMom
Employers should look at this policy as a fucking loss leader. Think of all the other employees who won’t get sick due to working alongside a sick person. Bloomberg has some pretty big blind spots.
joel hanes
Several of my family members have run small businesses.
Every one of them makes the same argument:
“Such laws guarantee that all my least-productive workers will always take five days off, with pay, every year, because they’ll call in sick even if they aren’t. I have to hire extra employees to cover for them when they’re gone.”
Such managers resent what they regard as a government-granted license for their employees to scam them. It’s not the 2% productivity loss, nor really the expense of covering for the missing employee — what’s important is the sense of grievance that “cheating” is being rewarded, and worse, at behest of government regulators.
So it fits neatly into this rubric:
Liberals worry that the rich and powerful are cheating the poor and weak.
Conservatives worry that the poor and weak are cheating the rich and powerful.
Villago Delenda Est
@BerkleeyMom:
Blind spots like this one are endemic to the modern “business leader” who thinks ONLY in terms of short term gain, not long term prosperity.
Adam Smith (yes, there I go again!) figured this out over two centuries ago. Guys like Bloomberg have pretty obviously never read his book.
Villago Delenda Est
@joel hanes:
It’s projection. It’s what they would do if they could get away with it.
Kay
I’m glad they won. I know it’s like pulling teeth but that probably just makes it sweeter.
And good for Gloria Steinem who continues to prove that there is absolutely no reason to partition “social issues” from economic issues, other than a lack of imagination or will.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Sure makers get sick; they’re sick of having to give any kind of concession to the takers, moochers, and looters. More importantly, though, they don’t have to worry about losing their job for getting sick. Makers fire, they don’t get fired.
Cacti
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
In terms of societal attitudes, you’re basically right.
After 30 years of Reaganomics, we as a people have lost the concept of the laborer being worthy of his hire. Instead, we believe we should all be grateful to
massathe “job creators” for allowing us to eke out a living.Soonergrunt
@joel hanes: You wonder how they possibly stay in business with that kind of quality thinking.
RSA
I think of this: List of statutory minimum employment leave by country. Germany, for example, where I worked for five years, mandates four weeks of paid vacation. The U.S.? None. That’s what makes us great, I guess…
Spaghetti Lee
@joel hanes:
My answer is, frankly, so what? The world is not gonna fucking collapse because someone went to see a baseball game or a concert five days out of a work year. Or if you don’t buy that, then bosses who gobble up all the profits and don’t pay their workers enough to actually buy anything will do it-have done it-a lot faster.
MikeJ
The snot lobby wants people to sneeze in your food.
The Moar You Know
Our family owned business doesn’t give sick leave.
Not because we’re dicks, but because it’s taxed and dealt with differently than other forms of time off. Not to our benefit. But that was easily dealt with.
We got rid of vacation days and we got rid of sick days and we just do “paid time off”. Starting at two weeks a year and going to a maximum of four weeks per year, I think. It accrues. You can use it, or do what most of our people do, which is to roll it over and cash it out every now and then. But you’ve got to leave 80 hours in the kitty.
Because we don’t want you coming to work sick either. Or exhausted, or burned out for that matter. It’s a fucking no brainer. Why would any “businessman” worth a shit even think this is a bad idea?
Scotius
Check out some of the comments to this editorial in a Maine newspaper calling for federal sick leave legislation.
Some people aren’t happy unless everybody else is sick and miserable.
http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/time-to-heal-u_s_-needs-paid-sick-leave-mandate_2013-03-27.html
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t know why they have to designate it “sick leave” either, although I understand why labor might see that as better politically.
I think a lot of them will use it for sick kids, because that’s the big panic 3 AM-the-night-before issue, if they can’t take the sick child to day care.
Del
Hell, I’d be shocked if they ever spent time on a shop floor. When you see workers as a profit drain and just another machine to be used, broken, and replaced seeing 5 paid days off for something like getting sick doesn’t compute.
Kay
@Scotius:
I wonder how it would poll, though, because minimum wage hikes poll well.
Conservatives and media have been lying about and trashing the minimum wage for my adult life and people seem to stubbornly cling to the idea that it’s “fair”, despite all that.
I’m still waiting for the FMLA to destroy US business. We were all going to run out and adopt our grandmothers to get 12 weeks off without pay.
mclaren
Wait another 5 years, when we’re well in the Hillary’s first term and the supreme court has legalized slavery. The Democrats will joyously herald as a great victory for labor the new supreme court decision that indentured serfs who got sold into bondage slavery for falling behind on their monthly credit card payments can’t be whipped more than 40 times.
“Only forty lashes!” Mnemosyne will warble. “What a fantastic progressive victory! Of course, lunatics like mclaren will claim that whipping slaves in America in 2018 is an evil thing, but since mclaren is mentally ill, we don’t need to pay any attention to her. All hail the ongoing progressive revolution! HILL-A-RY! HILL-A-RY! FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!”
mclaren
@efgoldman:
Thank you. As long as one of the deluded gullible commenters here shows up to shower me with acid contempt, I know I’m on the right track.
dollared
One million people in New York who are “employees” but they don’t have one day of sick leave?
Wow. Just. Wow.
Fuck Bloomberg.
e.a.f.
Providing paid sick leave isn’t going to bring down any company. it may save it. When sick workers come to work because they can’t afford to loose a day’s pay, especially with the flu, they can infect the entire work force at the job site. Better they stay home.
The attitude of some of these politician and employers is quite amuzing. They think because some one will take “advantage” of this. Gee there sure is a lot of trust between employers and workers. The politicians might want to hold back with their attitudes, these workers vote. If workers want to “screw” with their employers there are much better ways than staying home sick when they aren’t.
Class warfare is alive and well in America.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Certainly a court of judges appointed by other presidents will be Hillary’s fault. mclaren logic.
Suffern ACE
@dollared: well to add to the fucked up ness, it has been decided by the NYT that the leading democratic candidate to replace Bloomberg has a troubling temperament (for a woman). And heavens we can’t have that.
OzoneR
@e.a.f.:
You don’t get it.
Typically, a person sick with the flu will not come to work, even if they lose a day’s pay. They simply cannot summon the energy to make it work most of the time.
Therefore, it’s an excuse to save money, even if it’s just pinching a penny.
Business owners love not having to pay a worker.
PeakVT
@efgoldman: Because the “businessman” in question hasn’t been within 100 yards of an actual production floor in twenty years.
That’s some of it, but a lot of it is just that many “businessmen” are greedy, controlling, empathy-deficient jerks. I’m sure a lot of the people opposed to the bill come in to contact with all of their employees on a daily basis. But they only think of numbers when they see them.
dollared
@Suffern ACE: Jaysus. It never stops with our Elites, does it?
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Because some people value the exercise of power over other people more than they value considerations of material self interest, and some of these people are businessmen.
Burnspbesq
@OzoneR:
In the parallel universe where mclaren lines, all nine Supreme Court justices, by tradition, resign on Inauguration Day and the president gets to restock the court with appointments that don’t require confirmation by the Senate.
Gretchen
My employer gives 6 sick days a year, but if you use the 6th one, that’s a writeup for “excessive absence”. I didn’t get it at first, and asked the HR person, “wait, if you use all the sick days you have coming, you get written up?” She thought that a stupid question, because it was obvious to her that calling in 6 times in a year was excessive. The same person, when a flu epidemic threatened, urged everyone to stay home if they got the flu so it wouldn’t spread through the company and threaten our ability to get the work out. I asked if they were suspending writeups for absences. Of course not! They just hoped that those who got the flu hadn’t already used their sick days.
Suzanne
@Gretchen: I hope you all went and sneezed on her doorknobs. A LOT.
Debbie(aussie)
Here in the land of Aus every permanent employee is entitled to 20 days/4 weeks annual leave, 10 days/2 weeks sick/personal leave ( sick relatives, funerals etc) and 3 months long service leave at 10 years. Minimum wage for over 21 is $15.96 and is very much only paid to very low skilled workers. Gawd we have it good!
mai naem
@The Moar You Know: The reason they give PTO(and I know this from personal experience) is because when you quit the company you don’t get compensated for PTO. One thing I’ve learned working for different places over the years is if there’s some kind of procedural change in your compensation/benefit package, 9 out of 10 times you are getting the short end of the stick. My place is a mom and pop shop and to be perfectly honest, the owner could DIAF and I couldn’t care less. And, many if not most of my colleagues feel the same way.
mai naem
BTW, I bet this will get forgotten when people vote for Quinn because OMG she’s gay and we’re all so progressive. Somewhat off topic Paul Singer’s been a huge gay rights supporter and I was kind of wondering why since he one of those anti-Obama hedge funder neocons who doesn’t think rich people have enough influence in US politics. Turns out he’s got the same issue as Cheney – his kid’s got the ghey.
Burnspbesq
@Debbie(aussie):
And you’ll continue to have it good as long you continue to have mineral resources that China wants. After that …
fuckwit
If you can’t go to Foxconn, Foxconn will can come to you.
Debbie(aussie)
@Burnspbesq:
Probably true, but what excuse does the richest most powerful nation evah have for not having even a fraction of the protections provided to workers in most first world countries? Please don’t misunderstand me, we are not perfect but these things have been in place my whole life(51 yrs) except universal healthcare (1970″s).
joel hanes
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s projection. It’s what they would do if they could get away with it.
Uh, no. I know them well, and these are absurdly-responsible hardworking people, conservatives who are uncomfortable breaking rules, or even stretching them a little.
And I know the employees they’re talking about, grew up with some of them — it is mostly true that those employees will use every available day of sick time, every year, whether they’re sick or not.
My point was that the conservative opposition to such laws is really based not so much on economic impact, and more on the grievance that their worst employees (or anyone, really) will get rewarded for falsely calling in sick when they’re not.
It really gripes conservatives when they feel that some lazy/poor/irresponsible person is getting away with something.
(Not so much when bankers or senators get away with something.)
Rich C.
In case you don’t have enough to worry about, I got called yesterday by the Quinn campaign asking me what I thought about her. I told the guy-a newbie at calling-I thought her stand against paid sick leave was awful.
She’s the one and only mayoral candidate whose called me. So it seems she’s getting organized quickly.
slightly_peeved
@Burnspbesq:
And after that, we’ll have it for some other reason, since we got it in 1922, well before China was buying our resources. The Great Depression was still going after that, and it didn’t go away.
The actual reason we have it is because one of our two major political parties is and was the party of organized labor. The reason we’ll keep it is because very few people in this country bought into the right-wing US bullshit that unhealthy, tired and angry workers work just as effectively as the healthy rested ones.
Australians don’t dream of being millionaire businessmen; they dream of living comfortably. And we respect tradespeople. 80% of our country aren’t going to be conned into voting away their own sick leave and vacations.
zoot
another fucked up post by Cole who apparently doesn’t know what discourse means – which would be discussion of DIFFERENT views, but Cole apparently thinks “discourse” means agree with him and everyone else STFU.
kindness
You know the movie version of Tale of Two Cities? Yea, well I could never finish the book even though I tried to read it all the way through several times. Well the one scene I flash on in modern life with almost regularity is the old crone knitting up in front by the guillotine who just cackles ‘Guillotine….guillotine’. She is an Avatar for me for many of the simple answers to high handed folk who become too high handed. Her portrayal is exactly how I feel when I read a whole bunch of the shit we read most every day (and let’s not even go to election season).
Fred
Take two asprin and see a guillotine in the morning.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Cassidy
@mclaren: I like you better when you’re on your meds. You’re more coherent.
@zoot: Way to provide an alternative viewpoint there. Good job, here’s your lollie.
So here I am at work and sick. I’ve used up my generous sick allowance on staying home with the kids when they dind’t feel well. This sucks.
sherparick
On the media to which our rulers pay attention, CNBC, Faux, and Faux Business, the crisis of the moment is all the proles on Food Stamps and Social Security Disability. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/just-couple-of-white-jerks-agitating-to.html
“Dependency, I tell you, it all Dependency!!!” (Nothing mentioned about the Mitts of the world closing factories and mills across the country to ship the jobs overesas or that child poverty is the has grown).
Are as Corey Robin points out for libertarians abortion bands and contraception restrictions don’t count when determining “Freeeeedom:” It all low taxes, environmental deregulation, anti-union laws, and freedom to smoke!!!
http://coreyrobin.com/2013/03/28/the-libertarian-map-of-freedom/
Heads on Pitchforks, or as Petyr Baelish would say, “It is hard to bow and simper without one’s head.”
Judge Crater
The whole concept of “employment” has changed radically in the U.S. Most workers will be “independent contractors” competing against each other in our capitalistic paradise.
Walmart is now envisioning a system where its shoppers will deliver on-line purchases to other people’s homes. They will essentially bid for delivery orders and deliver the goods to someone’s house.
The genius of this concept has not yet been fully appreciated. It really takes free-market capitalism to a new, and vastly more exploitive, level. The huge middle and working class workforce would become a 24/7 adjunct to corporate outsourcing. In this case, delivery services, like Fedex and UPS, can be undercut (with their workers taking the hit) and Walmart can provide an Amazon-like business model by exploiting their own customers.
Jobs, and work, will be atomized into fungible pieces – and outsourced to the lowest bidder. The U.S. economy will become a virtuous circle of coolie labor supporting the economic elite and corporate hegemony. I don’t think even Karl Marx foresaw this kind of capitalistic cynicism.
Snarki, child of Loki
Well, give those disgruntled employers some options. Either they:
1. Give employees sick days, or,
B. Get a weekly inspection from the Health Dept, with a mandated 2 week shutdown to fix any violations, or,
5. Are automatically assumed to be legally liable for customers that become sick with communicable illnesses, and responsible for their medical treatment.
Citizen_X
@mclaren: Ooh, that is impressive, mclaren! Everybody notice, mclaren has laid down a marker for true progressive purity: opposing the actions of the Clinton administration before she’s even announced her candidacy.
dyspeptic
I had a economist from the USDA estimate the externalities from salmonella in eggs – time off work, illnesses, hospitalizations, etc – actually equals the total revenue of the egg industry. Most of these illnesses come from restaurants and most of the exposures come from cross-contamination. The restaurant industry, which I have been involved with for 25 years, fights against sick days and fires you if you don’t show up. They create the conditions and incentivize (not a real word, I know) employees to make people sick.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@joel hanes:
@joel hanes:
100% this. There really are a lot of people in these low-wage jobs who will use the sick leave as paid days off, and there really are a lot of employers of those guys who just bust a blood vessel over their being able to get away with it(1). Which doesn’t change the basic fact that in a civilized society, a worker ought to be able to call in sick without losing the pay that will allow him to continue working (let alone his job).
(1) Of course if you look at the fine print I’m sure the employer can require a doctor’s note from an employee who takes sick time.
The Other Bob
Wait. Bloomberg wants people to drink less pop so they are more healthy but
doesn’t want them to take time off when they are unhealthy?
Yutsano
@The Other Bob: How DARE you suggest anything that would inconvenience our dear Jerb Creators!! Banning large sodas sticks it to poor an blah people. But sick days? Sucking up the almighty Profit? Beyond the pale, my good sir!
Epicurus
Lest we forget, while Bloomberg is clearly a plutocratic dictator, La Quinn sat on this for three GD years. And I’m going to vote for her next November?? Not a chance…I will never forgive her for aiding and abetting Bloomie in corrupting the City Charter to enable his illegal third term. She’s a pile of trash and shouldn’t even be on the City council. I do hope and pray that someone else wins. I don’t relish the thought of Bloomie’s whining being replaced by Rosie O’Donnell’s voice double.
Epicurus
@mclaren: I am intrigued by your powers of clairvoyance. Now, can you tell me where the Dow will stand next month? Oh, right, you really can’t tell the future. You just enjoy typing out your paranoid fantasies, and trashing those you don’t like. Does it make you feel better when you hit the “Submit Comment” button? You are a sad little person with apparent self-esteem issues. There are many qualified mental health professionals who may be able to help you with this problem. Otherwise, Redstate.com is that way; don’t let the door hit you on the way out, troll.
VFX Lurker
@Villago Delenda Est:
Most of the visual effects artists I know work without any kind of benefits like paid sick days or health insurance coverage. When they get sick, they drag themselves into work and infect everyone else with whatever bug they’ve got.
Whee.
mclaren
@Cassidy:
“One very common tactic for enforcing political orthodoxies is to malign the character, “style” and even mental health of those who challenge them. The most extreme version of this was an old Soviet favorite: to declare political dissidents mentally ill and put them in hospitals. In the US, those who take even the tiniest steps outside of political convention are instantly decreed “crazy”, as happened to the 2002 anti-war version of Howard Dean and the current iteration of Ron Paul (in most cases, what is actually “crazy” are the political orthodoxies this tactic seeks to shield from challenge).
“This method is applied with particular aggression to those who engage in any meaningful dissent against the society’s most powerful factions and their institutions.”
[“How Noam Chomsky is Discussed,” Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, 23 March 2013.]
mclaren
@Epicurus:
TRANSLATION: “Your criticism of my craven bootlicking of authoritarian thugs like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton enrages me far beyond the capacity for rational thought, but I don’t have any facts or logic to offer in opposition.”
mclaren
@zoot:
No, another fucked up post by a troll. The dictionary definition of the word discourse is: A formal, lengthy discussion of a subject, either written or spoken.
There’s no mention of “different viewpoints.”
Go away, troll, you’re not up to even the minimal standards of ignorant arrogant assholeishness of burnsbpesq or mnemosyne.