Archive: March, 2010
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
Does your company's sick pay policy allow you to take off when your kids are sick, or do you do what many folks do in that scenario -- start coughing, call the boss and lie, lie, lie?
All the proposed federal, state and city legislation on earned sick time allows paid sick time to be used by the person, or by the person for care of a family member.
Whatever one's position on mandatory paid sick leave, this part is a good idea. If you are going to have mandatory paid sick leave, it should include an ability to use that time to care for a child or elderly parent. Otherwise, everyone is lying and I generally think it is a bad practice when people are put in a position to have to lie. It breeds cynicism that carries over into other venues on the job. It puts supervisors in a bad position as well, when they are pretty sure that coughing on the phone is fake. So are they supposed to enforce company rules at the expense of alienating a good employee in a tough situation?
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
It's not fun to think about eating at the Queen Village restaurant where Maureen works as a server. She can get time off for being sick, but only if she finds someone to fill her shift. "I've gone to work with the flu," she said, in an article I wrote in today's Philadelphia Inquirer on paid sick time. "It's disturbing," she said.
In a time when an overhaul of the nation's health care system is in the daily headlines and people are making grandiose pronouncements, it's also time to focus on what happens when people actually get sick. One telling statistic: barely one in three low-wage workers (under $10.63 an hour) has paid sick time. Besides all the legislation in Washington on the health system, there is legislation at a national, state and city level on earned sick pay.
I just wanted to provide a little more information on the sick pay legislation that I mentioned in the story.
