Did you notice that there was something missing in the debate over Connecticut’s new paid sick leave mandate? Amid all the debate and all the lobbying and all the political grenade launching, there was one aspect of paid sick leave that almost never came up for public consumption.
As the first state in the nation to decide that legislators do a much better job of managing private-sector employees than real business executives do, one would have expected a rather thorough review of all the potential pitfalls and theoretical benefits.
They were almost all there, except … except … for one really interesting part of the argument that never seemed to come up. Political scientists have a term for an issue that should be at the heart of a policy debate, but, instead, is buried in everyone’s desk drawer. The theory is, if you bring up the issue, no matter which side of the argument you’re on, you will lose points. The political scientists call such issues, “icky.”
The legislative debate on mandated sick leave seemed thorough enough. The Republicans (and a few rational Democrats) made the expected argument that at a time of economic stress, a new, clumsy, expensive mandate was bad for business and bad for economic development public relations.
The Democrats did the social justice cha-cha, made the case for “public health” (you don’t want a sick waitress drooling on your chicken soup); and denied that the messy business was really going to be very expensive for business.
A few business lobbyists also whispered the dull reality that the record keeping and job classifications and disruption of existing personal day/sick time/vacation policies would be a Human Resources/Accounting nightmare.
So, what was there left to say? What was the great, unspoken reality that was seldom uttered out loud? When is the irritating columnist going to get to the point?
What many were thinking, but few were saying: Is mandated sick time pay not a glorious incentive for deceitful, sneaky, shiftless, lazy employees to take a few days off, even if they aren’t, you know, really sick? Is this not a platform by which honest, healthy employees — and struggling bosses — will be subsidizing days at the ball park for employees who call in “sick?”
It was almost sweet of everyone not to bring it up. The bosses and business lobbyists didn’t want to come across as monsters. The lefty Democrats were too busy strumming their guitars and singing folk songs to suggest that government-inspired incentives often move people in the wrong direction.
It’s not as if the issue is unknown to the players. Approximately 3.4 percent of the nation’s legal talent spends 40 trillion hours a year bickering over Workers’ Compensation claims, to determine why, if Joe wrenched his back on the job and can’t work right now, that he’s signed up to run a marathon and is taking snow-shoveling jobs on the side.
Despite the fact that Connecticut Democrats apparently think that most Connecticut workers slave away in coal mines or sweat shops, many state employers clump “personal days,” “sick days” and “vacation days” into one, big hideous mess, so that the sneaky employees don’t have to actually explain what disease held them back last Tuesday.
And it wasn’t that the General Assembly avoided the discussion because the threat of dishonest employees is theoretical. The workforce productivity firm Kronos, as reported in Businessweek, found that 57 percent of U.S. salaried employees take sick days when they’re not sick.
I think I’m going to stop now. I feel a cold coming on. Cough. Cough.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
