sick pay

[cab21]

since some mandatory earned sickpay proposals are being passed, it made me wonder about the concept of sick pay?

now aren't people just getting a lower wage so that they can get "sick pay", which is going to be less than if the law was not there in the first place? i assume a employer has to both take money away from one place to put it in another, as well as take money away to pay the administration of such a system. it just seems both a employee and employer would be better off not having sick pay, because then the employee could take home more pay per hour and the employer would not have the added administrations costs.

 

one that i saw gives 1 hour paid sick leave per 30 hours worked, so it just seems that a person working 30 hours at 100% and having 1 hour of unpaid sick time would be better for that person than working 30 hours at <100% and having 1 hour paid sick time and still making <100% of what they would have otherwise.

[Pepin]

Yes, the total wage would be lower than otherwise as the employer is not going to give a raise. To do some math.

 

If a worker earns $10,000 a year working 1000 hours with no sick days, they earn a wage of $10 an hour.

 

10000 dollars per year / 1000 hours per year = 10 dollars and hour

 

Since the annual wage will stay the same, the worker will have to work more hours to counteract the sick hours

 

If the worker gains 50 hours of sick hours, then this accounts for $500 from their pay.

 

sick hours x wage = pay deduction

50 hours per year x 10 dollars per hour = 500 dollars a year

 

To calculate the worker's new per hour wage, it is

 

(annual income - sick income) / hours worked = adjusted wage

(10000 dollars per year - 500 sick dollars per year) / hours worked per year = 9.5 dollars per year

 

Now I didn't have to do all that not so fancy math as most will understand it intuitively, but I just felt like doing it.

 

The main caveat to make is that this would not have so much of an effect on those who are currently employed and productive, but rather with those who are seeking new jobs. Some employers may lay off their employees because of this law, but granted the terms aren't too outrageous, it won't be too many. It likely would have an effect on your future income if you were already employed, but initially it would be a decent benefit to you as they aren't going to decrease your wage.

 

It is like how if the minimum wage got moved up to $10 an hour, I would benifit from this initially as my productivity exceeds this and I would be kept at my place of employment. But for others, and for me in the long term, this would have quite negative effects.

[andrew21594]

If anything, these proposals make the employees LESS valuable to the employer since the employees can now spend less time working (no need to hurry back to work if you can stay away and keep having the Benjamins rolling in). Since the employee is now less valuable, it is in the employer's incentive to pay them less for the whole year. So yes, people are going to get a lower wage (and/or less in the way of employment benefits eg. dental care, free parking). Although the administrative costs would be small, they would still be non-zero.

 

Regardless of whether people are better off, anything "mandatory" is an instruction enforced by whatever threat is necessary. Since these proposals have to do with illness, there is no element of violence and so the mandatory proposals are clearly morally wrong. 

 

The concept of sick pay doesn't have to make sense. It just has to suit the popular opinion and be enforced.

[NotDarkYet]

Everything "free" (ie, forced by the state) gets sucked out of the general wealth.

 

 

 

The magic trick works because one is easily seen (ie, a bridge, a sick day, a tank), and the costs are diffuse and unclear.

[tasmlab]

For just about everybody it would just be an accounting shell game.  It wouldn't change what an employer would budget for an employee.

 

The exception would be hourly minimum wage workers, since their wages can't be reduced to accommodate sick time.

[yagami]

Yea you are correct. This will simply shift money around. People immediately effected by this will get a small boost in available income but when time for raises come they may get no raise or a smaller raise. And those that aren't employed yet ill get lower pay to compensate. 

 

I swear it's like people think the business is just gonna reduce it's profits in order to pay more to it's employees. Because you know they have too much profits anyway. What would a business possibly do with all that "extra" money. The ignorance of people.

[Pepin]

To point out the obvious, these programs are intended to create short term economic stimulus. The objective is not the future, but rather the present. Most of it has to do with improving the current public opinion as well as improving economic numbers. Political parties are only concerned with what will affect the very next election, which creates many programs that have a short term stimulus with a long term loss.

[Josh F]

There are a lot of ways to handle sick pay.  Some unions have an extended sick pool, wherein all employees pay into a pool which can only be accessed by the severely ill in rare cases where they need months off work for recovery.  Government is always a day late and a dollar short when it comes to these things, for example unions and workers created the weekend long before government made it mandatory.  

[Bradford26]

 

since some mandatory earned sickpay proposals are being passed, it made me wonder about the concept of sick pay?

now aren't people just getting a lower wage so that they can get "sick pay", which is going to be less than if the law was not there in the first place? i assume a employer has to both take money away from one place to put it in another, as well as take money away to pay the administration of such a system. it just seems both a employee and employer would be better off not having sick pay, because then the employee could take home more pay per hour and the employer would not have the added administrations costs.

 

one that i saw gives 1 hour paid sick leave per 30 hours worked, so it just seems that a person working 30 hours at 100% and having 1 hour of unpaid sick time would be better for that person than working 30 hours at <100% and having 1 hour paid sick time and still making <100% of what they would have otherwise.

 

 

Employers offer sick pay as a benefit. Sick pay is the allocation of an amount of your future income to receive when you are absent due to illness. This has two major benefits. First, it is insurance against a sudden loss of income due to an extended absence. Second, it encourages taking sick days for lesser illness in an effort to prevent major illness and longer absences.

 

A good practice is for companies to pay out sick days at the end of the year to discourage employees spending them because they are about to disappear. This way, all employees get the benefit whether they take the days or not. Companies could allow employees to exchange their sick days for vacation days or simply make the employees use vacation days for illnesses. Inevitably, for every problem, a range of voluntary solutions are found.

 

 

There are a lot of ways to handle sick pay.  Some unions have an extended sick pool, wherein all employees pay into a pool which can only be accessed by the severely ill in rare cases where they need months off work for recovery.  Government is always a day late and a dollar short when it comes to these things, for example unions and workers created the weekend long before government made it mandatory.  

 

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I benefited from a program at my company where people could dedicate up to a certain amount of their paycheck to help me with whatever costs my cancer policy didn't cover. If I used it, their paychecks would be deducted by their fraction of the value. They had a similar program which allowed people to donate vacation days, since I went through my reserve pretty quickly.

[Josh F]

Yeah, I tend to appreciate ideas like that.  Also I worked for a company where if you didn't use your sick hours you still got the compensation for them at the end of the year.  

[Coogeebay24]

Sick pay is a difficult subject because in certain circumstances it acts an incentive for behavior that ends up being undesirable. Mandatory paid sick leave is really only an issue for hourly employees, as salaried employees will get paid regardless when missing short amounts of time for minor illness.

 

There are certain professions, the majority of which involve the government, where the ability to cash out paid sick leave creates major problems. For example, my mother is a teacher and I know that it is very common for teachers to show up to work sick (since their performance is not measured and they cannot be fired) and accrue a large number of sick days which they will then cash out at retirement. The point of paid sick leave is obviously not to act as a bonus to government employees with relatively cushy jobs.  

 

I certainly sympathize with the hardships of individuals who are in the low $ hourly wage industries, who often feel compelled to show up to work regardless of health (I encountered this frequently when I was a dishwasher), however I strongly disagree with any action to legislate paying people for hours they do not work. My opinion on sick leave has always been, be honest and reasonable, use it when really needed, and if you have motivated employees with high integrity, you don't need a formalized system to deal with this.

 

Another point, to consider, is that just by passing laws requiring companies to provide paid sick leave does not necessarily mean that employees will be able to access it. When I worked in investment banking, I theoretically accrued 10 vacation days a year, but after 2 years working at the company, had only taken 1 vacation day (as merely requesting days off would trigger sideways looks from the higher-ups).  

[tasmlab]

I give my employees six weeks off per year and they can use that time to either go on holiday, take a break, run errands or be sick.  They have flexible schedules and I'm sweet to them.

 

It's an imperative for employers to have happy, engaged employees if they hope them to be productive and a positive part of the team.

 

The point relevant to this thread is that sick pay should be something one negotiates for like everything else.  We don't need the government mandating it.

[WorBlux]

Yes, the total wage would be lower than otherwise as the employer is not going to give a raise. To do some math.

 

If a worker earns $10,000 a year working 1000 hours with no sick days, they earn a wage of $10 an hour.

 

10000 dollars per year / 1000 hours per year = 10 dollars and hour

 

Since the annual wage will stay the same, the worker will have to work more hours to counteract the sick hours

 

If the worker gains 50 hours of sick hours, then this accounts for $500 from their pay.

 

sick hours x wage = pay deduction

50 hours per year x 10 dollars per hour = 500 dollars a year

 

To calculate the worker's new per hour wage, it is

 

(annual income - sick income) / hours worked = adjusted wage

(10000 dollars per year - 500 sick dollars per year) / hours worked per year = 9.5 dollars per year

 

Now I didn't have to do all that not so fancy math as most will understand it intuitively, but I just felt like doing it.

 

The main caveat to make is that this would not have so much of an effect on those who are currently employed and productive, but rather with those who are seeking new jobs. Some employers may lay off their employees because of this law, but granted the terms aren't too outrageous, it won't be too many. It likely would have an effect on your future income if you were already employed, but initially it would be a decent benefit to you as they aren't going to decrease your wage.

 

It is like how if the minimum wage got moved up to $10 an hour, I would benifit from this initially as my productivity exceeds this and I would be kept at my place of employment. But for others, and for me in the long term, this would have quite negative effects.

 

Not neccessarily as emplyee productivity is rarely a constant per hour thing. If a sick leave policy keeps contagious employees at home and prevents your whole office from being sick at the same time, then you may have gained enough total productivity to offset the cost.

 

Of course the government has no place in this calculation, but it's not pure cost, there is some benefit to be had.

 

[cab21]

the voluntary programs seem interesting. it sounds a bit more psychological when people would prefer sick pay to a larger paycheck or something though. maybe if the person got the sick pay in a bulk sum at the beginning of the year, then lower paychecks would be fine because that bulk could be invested. even getting unused sick-pay at the end of the year is worse for the employee overall than getting bigger paychecks, but it would be good for a employer to be able to keep such money and earn interest on it.

[Pepin]

Not neccessarily as emplyee productivity is rarely a constant per hour thing. If a sick leave policy keeps contagious employees at home and prevents your whole office from being sick at the same time, then you may have gained enough total productivity to offset the cost.

 

Of course the government has no place in this calculation, but it's not pure cost, there is some benefit to be had.

 

 

This is a good point. There would also be the issue of sick employees who choose to go to work anyway producing far less than usual. I wonder what the numbers on this stuff would look like.