To The Editor:
Especially with Connecticut’s unemployment rate skyrocketing 52 percent from April 2008 to April 2009, the push to mandate paid sick leave is thoroughly misguided (“Paid Sick Days Is Smart Business,” June 1). Forcing employers — a majority of whom already have sick leave policies in place — to commit to this time off will hurt the very employees this mandate purports to help.
Imposing a typical sick leave mandate will likely increase employer costs by as much as 5 percent per year. Research from the University of California, Irvine shows that a 5 percent increase in labor costs will cause another spike in unemployment beyond current levels (with the largest unemployment increases among high-school dropouts and minority teens).
Businesses offset additional labor costs by reducing staff hours, benefits, and wages. Especially at a time when the economy is struggling, state policymakers should focus on promoting job growth instead of pushing mandates that create barriers to entry-level employment, especially for the state’s most vulnerable workers.
Kristen Lopez Eastlick
Senior Economic Analyst
Employment Policies Institute
Washington, DC 20005
Market Should Drive Benefits
To The Editor:
Every day in Connecticut, thousands of small business owners wake up to this thought: Is today payday? Thank God it’s only Wednesday, and I have two more days to meet this week’s payroll.
Now our state representatives have decided that Connecticut’s small business owners, unlike those in any other state in the union, must also pay their employees to stay home. The House just pushed private employment one step closer to the government employee union philosophy of “entitlement.” Because so many today cannot grasp the concept of putting a few dollars a week away for a rainy day, Connecticut’s employers are now to be ordered to add thousands of additional payroll dollars to their already high costs of doing business here.
Employee benefits should be market-driven. Those businesses that can afford to pay full benefit packages likely already do so. Their competitive strategy views this as an opportunity to recruit the best possible job candidates. Most others can just dream about the day when they might be able to share their success with their loyal employees. Ask any of the unemployed if they would turn down a job offer because it did not include paid sick days.
Bob DeZinno
DT Media Group
Waterbury
Reader response:
“Paid Sick Leave Will Hurt? Are you Kidding? What really hurts or rather is totally obsurd is when a Employee is REQUIRED to come to work sick with Flu Like Symptoms or while nursing a debilitating injury. How much productivity does anyone reasonably expect someone to have if they are trying to do their jobs and yet they are no where near 100 percent healthy enough to complete the simplest of tasks and responsibilities? Business Owners complain about how much it’s going to cost them by requiring to have paid sick leave benefits for their employees. A total of (5) days for the entire year mind you. I have a few questions. How much will it cost a business owner if an employee shows up to work with the H1N1 Virus because they 1. Cannot afford to lose a day’s pay? 2. They are in fear and intimidated by the fact if they call in sick of being terminated by their employer? and 3. which then ultimately results in most if not all of the other employees becoming ill in epedimic like proportions thus temporarily wiping out normal business operations which would cost a business a heck of a lot more than paying out sick leave benefits? You don’t have to be an Mathematician or have a PhD in Economics to figure out that equation. If the Governor, The CDC, and Even President Obama are all on record telling us to stay home if we are
sick then obviously it is time for the business owners to wake and smell reality. Some things simply take presedence and priority over the All Mighty Dollar. There is No Price Tag attached to one’s Health and Well-Being.” — Mark L. Lucey Sr., CSEA/SEIU Local 2001
More Common Sense Needed
To The Editor:
What else do you expect from our elected officials? Things keep getting worse and our politicians keep getting more incompetent every day.
If there was a little common sense in our government, it would at lease offer a glimmer of hope, but unfortunately it just doesn’t seem to exist.
We need to remember this during election time and I would like to see “None of the Above” added to the voting machines for every office.
Imagine a Connecticut without politicians! We should be a first with that distinction and then we would see our population boom, businesses come back in droves and the largest white elephant employer (state government) disappear because they couldn’t make it in the real world, where if you need to fill a pot hole you use one employee and a truck, not five trucks following one man with a shovel, which you can see every day on our highways.
We do have the distinction of having the worst highways in New England, which I can testify to after a trip two weeks ago through Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. How do they do it with their small populations, low taxes and no casinos?
As a small business owner, I think I speak for a lot of my colleagues when I say, “We’ve had enough!”
Greg Gondek
Partner
C & G Holdings
Cromwell
