One Fool Says Valuing Employees with Sick Days Isn’t Fooling Around

OhioNewsBureau 

COLUMBUS, OHIO: The National Federation of Independent Business/Ohio announced Tuesday the results of a recent an internally generated study showing that the proposed Issue 4 – mandating business with 25 or more employees give workers seven paid sick days – would cost 75,000 Ohioans their jobs while placing a $1.17 billion burden on the state's employers.

According to the study – found here – if the proposal becomes law, as it seems will happen if it goes to the ballot in November, Ohio businesses might lose $9.4 billion in sales from 2008 to 2012. 

"Small business owners, including firms not directly targeted by the mandate, have been telling us that this mandate will be a hardship for their businesses and hinder their ability to create and retain jobs," Roger R. Geiger of NFIB/Ohio told The Dispatch. "This study is proof positive that the Issue 4 is bad medicine for Ohio," he said. 

The study’s findings showed Ohio's smallest firms, those with as little as one employee, bear a huge part of the negative impacts from what defenders of business, including major media editorial boards, classify as a misguided government mandate. 

Claudia Kovach, vice president of City Machine Technology in Youngstown, was quoted by The Dispatch saying that, while the company provides its employees with paid vacation, healthcare, child-birth, bereavement and holiday pay, and shift differential pay, since its operations are 24/7, such a mandate would force her to “negotiate reductions in benefits with my employees to make up for the added burdens." 

NFIB's study was conducting using the BSim module of the REMI input-output system for short-term and long-term industry forecasts, the published report said. 

No Fooling Around On Paid Sick Days by Motley Fools

In part one of its Working for Balance reports, that examines business efforts to embrace the work-life balance philosophy, the Nightly Business Report, seen on PBS, looks at what the financial advice company know as The Motley Fool is doing to cultivate an anti-stress environment, which stands in stark contrast to the fears being panhandled by FBIB about paid sick days in Ohio and the disastrous affect it will have on jobs. 

According to Erika Miller, the PBS correspondent for the series, the first piece in the series focuses on stress in the workplace. She said she was shocked by how low this topic is on the radar screen at most companies. Miller says worker stress costs American industry more than $300 billion dollars a year, according to the American Institute of Stress. 

She visited The Motley Fool company, based in Virginia, and spoke with its founder, Tom Gardner, about why he values workers so much that he gives them paid sick days, and other paid time off work, as a progressive part of their performance- not clock-based system. While the culture is forgiving at The Motley Fool, as one might draw from the name of the company itself, Miller says the firm’s goal of having an anti-stress culture is returned in spades by loyal, productive employees who rarely leave. 

Gardner commented on the story, saying he would like to adopt similar policies. “Applying these basic principles won't play out the same in every industry and at every business,” he said, adding, “But I think putting together a) an increase in the frequency of performance reviews alongside b) greater flexibility and freedom for employees makes sound economic sense.” He said matching performance requirements with freedom & flexibility motivates him and his employees at TMG to excel. 

Another take on this problem comes from James Sherk at the Heritage Foundation. He argues that Congress could help Americans prepare for illnesses by creating sick leave savings accounts, which would operate like a traditional IRA, in that workers could put pre-tax dollars into the accounts, which they could invest in various low-risk bonds and similar savings vehicles and that they could draw on when they need time off from work due to an illness or to tend to a family member. The same tax advantages that encourage employers to match contributions to a 401(k) plan would also apply, said Sherk. Then, upon retirement, any unused funds could be rolled into a retirement account or taken as a lump-sum, tax-free payment. 

The status of paid family and sick leave campaigns across the nation show that two cities -- San Francisco and DC -- have already passed paid leave laws, the NBR Web site noted. It also said that New Jersey has passed one, although the law has not yet gone into effect. National level attempts, like the Healthy Families, Healthy Workplaces Act, sponsored by Edward Kennedy, is unlikely to gain traction anytime soon, given its an election year. 

Will Sky Fall and Jobs Go if Workers Win One for a Change?

Ohio major mainstream editorial boards, like The Columbus Dispatch, generally echo talking points from business groups and their spokesmen that demanding any level of accountability or responsibility from business will result in more costs due to paperwork or time that translates into cutting jobs or forcing workers to take back gains to avert disaster. 

Workers, whose membership in unions has reached dangerously low levels, never seem to get a break from newspaper pundits who all too regularly take the side of Big Business. 

But one response to the FBID’s self-generated report today on the devastation to business that would follow from treating workers like valued assets comes from David Scott, who posted this comment to the Web site of The Columbus Dispatch: 

“One of the time-honored ways that Big Business fights any proposal it doesn’t like is to trot out some phony set of numbers about how establishing a minimum wage or ending child labor or requiring brakes on cars or what have you will cost trillions and we'll all lose jobs and die horribly. Rubbish. 

“The cold fact is that most middle-class employees have had sick leave provision for years and wouldn't dream of not having it. People get sick. So do their kids. The campaign against this is racist, sexist, class-based and dishonest -- and the Columbus Dispatch editorial page should be ashamed of itself for its knee-jerk support of its corporate buddies. Many poor people have no bargaining power at all. A decent society looks out for their interests, and that is what the people of Ohio are about to do --- whether the greedheads like it or not.“

For his part, Gov. Ted Strickland has been trying to keep the issue off the November ballot, working behind the scenes with business groups opposed to the measure and supporters who want it on the ballot because they think it will be overwhelmingly approved by Ohio voters. Republicans, who tend to champion business issues, have another reason to keep it off the ballot. They believe it will draw lots of Democratic-leaning voters to the polls, which will help Sen. Barack Obama way more than it Sen. John McCain, much as the anti-gay constitutional amendment in 2004 lured evangelical voters to the polls to vote for it and for President Bush, who earned a second term in the White House by taking Ohio by fewer than 119,000 votes. 

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal. Find ONB archives here.
Photo credits: (c) 2008 AnHarris, istockphoto

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