People who get sick might disagree:
President Obama will sign an executive order Monday giving hundreds of thousands of workers employed by federal contractors access to paid sick leave.
The order will require federal contractors to give employees the ability to earn at least seven days (56 hours) of paid sick leave annually. It will give about 300,000 workers new access to paid sick leave, and an additional number of workers the ability to earn more sick leave than they had before.
For these workers there will no longer be the fear that an extended illness will cost them the ability to pay their bills or even keep their jobs:
The policy, which will begin with new federal contracts in 2017, will allow workers to use paid sick leave to take care of themselves, family members and loved ones, and also apply to absences related to domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking.
The order is the latest from the White House aimed at pushing Obama's workplace agenda around a Republican-led Congress.
This is exactly the kind of good government regulation that can have a
ripple effect in the private sector:
Workers' rights advocates praised Obama's actions, saying it would encourage private companies to institute similar leave policies.
"Such a move is precisely the government’s role: to create model standards for the rest of the country to follow," Ellen Bravo, the executive director of Family Values at Work, wrote in a statement.
Administrations favoring (gasp!) worker's rights may be something sadly unfamiliar to those in this country, but not so much in the rest of the developed world. The U.S.
stands alone in not requiring
any mandated paid leave of any type for its workers, including vacation leave:
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) finds that the United States is the only 1 of 22 rich countries that fails to guarantee workers some form of paid sick leave in the report, Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries .
The report finds that the United States is:
* the only country that does not provide paid sick leave for a worker undergoing a 50-day cancer treatment
* 1 of only 3 countries that does not provide paid sick days for a worker missing 5 days of work due to the flu.
Providing paid leave makes economic sense, primarily because it influences people who are sick but would otherwise "tough it out" to stay home rather than spread whatever it is they have throughout the workplace:
Administration officials said the latest action would help lower costs associated with worker attrition rates and workplace illness, and make companies contracting with the federal government more attractive to potential employees.
The president planned to discuss the new policy and other administration initiatives Monday in a Labor Day speech in Boston. He is also expected to call on Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, which would require all businesses with 15 or more employees to offer up to seven paid sick days each year.
From the New York Times:
The order is the latest move by Mr. Obama to use his power over federal contracts to institute changes on a small slice of the labor market that he cannot persuade Congress to enact for the whole country.
Among other things, he has signed orders requiring contractors to pay higher minimum wages, ban retaliation against workers who discuss their compensation, provide employees more information about their pay and protect gay and transgender workers from discrimination.
The administration has also used its regulatory power to affect workplaces outside the federal orbit. Among other things, it has advanced rules aimed at guaranteeing millions more Americans the right to extra overtime pay; it has cracked down on employers who deny workers basic protections by classifying them as contractors; and its appointees have made it easier for employees of contractors and franchises to bargain collectively with corporations with sway over their operations.
Good luck getting this type of Executive action from any Republican Administration.
Happy Labor Day.