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Should small businesses be required to offer employees paid sick leave?


On Monday, Seattle became the third U.S. city to pass legislation requiring businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees, joining Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. But opponents argue that such mandates do more harm than good for both employees and employers, often forcing layoffs of the very workers the legislation is designed to protect. What do you think? Is paid sick leave a worker's due? Is it too onerous for businesses struggling to get on their feet?

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    Sick time should be paid at the employer's discretion. And the employer should pay for every hour worked by the employee, no free overtime. That's a fair shake for everyone.

    6 Recommendations


    The problem with sick leave:
    You will always have a group of individuals that thinks they must use it; or lose it.

    Vacation days are the way to go.
    If they don’t give a two weeks’ notice, the days out are unpaid.
    Then everyone receives the same number of days.
    It also reduces the number of no shows, which always interrupt the schedule.

    2 Recommendations

  • I think it allows sick employees to stay home and not bring their illness to work for others to catch.


  • No one, much less small businesses, can be ready to handle EVERY contingency....and EVERYONE ELSE's contingency.....that comes their way. And they shouldn't be burdened with having to pay for an employee whose not there. Sure, it would be great to be able to take a day off when you are truly sick. But, in all honesty, do we ALL save our sick days waiting for the flu to catch up to us? No, we don't.

    The number of sick days that are being proposed are so small that they wouldn't cover any type of serious illness anyway.


  • We offer total paid time off, which employees can use for vacation or sick time. If they don't use it for sick time, they have more vacation days. If they are truly sick, they have the time. But, they are incentivized not to burn a sick day because that's one less vacation day they have. We almost never have staff call in sick. All of their time off is planned, which helps things run more smoothly.

    Sick days often just reward the not-so-great employees who feel entitled to use a sick day even if they aren't sick while punishing your best employees who never call in yet ultimately get less time off than the other employee.

    Our model gives everyone the same time off and rewards our best people for showing up to work and never calling in sick unless they absolutely need to do so.

    I find that the better we treat our employees, the better everything runs. You get your investment back in morale, productivity, loyalty and longevity. Same goes for health insurance. Take care of your people and they'll take care of your business.


    3 Recommendations

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