Paid sick days coalition unveiled; Business lobby gives its usual knee-jerk response

A new and broad coalition of nonprofit advocates held a press event at the General Assembly this morning to launch its campaign to guarantee that all workers in North Carolina (or at least almost all of them anyway) have access to paid sick days. It’s a fairly remarkable fact that as many as 1.6 million people (42% of the state’s workforce) do not get a single paid sick day from their employer. You can get a lot more relevant facts about the campaign and the issue by going here.

Though today’s event was a well-covered success (look for video here on The Progressive Pulse shortly), it was a disappointment to see a cadre of business lobbyists out in force outside the press room distributing misinformation. Predictably, the lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business was there to claim that a sick days requirement would impose some kind of new and onerous burden on employers.

What’s so frustrating about this, of course, is that if these people actually stopped for just a moment and used just a little common sense, they’d realize that paid sick days will actually help employers and their bottom lines by lowering employer health cares costs, increasing employee productivity, loyalty and retention and reducing overall employee absences.

Think about it for a minute: What’s the simplest and fastest way to keep your entire workforce from getting sick?

Uh, could it be allowing the first person in the shop who comes down with the flu to stay the heck out of the office when they’re contagious??!! Even if one takes it as a given that simple human decency has no role in employer-employee relations, you’d think this obvious, common sense conclusion would be enough to stifle the absurd objections raised by NFIB.

Alas, it looks as if the new coalition will have to fight the business lobbyists at every corner on this one. Let’s hope that in the near future at least some thoughtful employers break with their ideology-driven lobbying groups.

Now, wouldn’t that be a helpful trend for North Carolina?

Learn more about the campaign by visiting www.ncsickdays.org.