NY Times: The Cost of Staying Home Sick

[marmar]

The Cost of Staying Home Sick
Published: May 4, 2009


It sounded like the responsible course of action when President Obama and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged people with flu symptoms to stay at home so they do not infect others in the community — and to keep any sick children out of school as well. So far, the new swine flu virus has caused only mild disease in the United States, but it has spread through most of the country, making it likely that rising numbers of people will be developing symptoms.

But what are civic-minded workers to do when staying home will cost many their daily pay and, in a recession-plagued economy, possibly their jobs if employers become exasperated over their absence?

Roughly 60 million American workers have no paid sick leave, and only a minority can draw pay if they stay home with sick children. The lack of paid leave is especially acute in this country among low-wage workers, food-service workers and part-timers, among others.

Many other countries do better. According to Dr. Jody Heymann, director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University, more than 160 countries ensure that all their citizens receive paid sick leave and more than 110 of them guarantee paid leave from the first day of illness.

If President Obama is serious about responsible action to control infectious disease threats, he should back legislation to grant Americans at least seven paid sick days a year — long enough to stay home until an influenza infection subsides. Then virtually all Americans could heed his advice, and we would all be safer.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/opinion/05tue3.html?_r=1

[PADemD]

1. Even 7 days is not enough if you have more than one child and

they come down with the flu one after another.

[nichomachus]

2. Please don't hold your breath waiting for this "change"

It ain't gonna happen as long as our government is just a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street.

We need to stop agonizing over this and a thousand other "causes" that could be effectively solved all at once -- with one stroke -- by getting corporate money out of elections. But as long as our representatives and senators have to whore themselves out to the highest bidder, we're the ones getting screwed.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

3. Very well said.

:thumbsup:

Moneyed interests control all events related to political outcomes. We are in the exact throes that the pilgrims experienced when they risked everything to cross the Atlantic.

Only difference... there is no New World to exploit.

[kath]

4. Yeppers, ain't gonna happen - our government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the

corporation would never allow it.

Us peons are SCREWN, over and over and over again...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

5. We need menstrual leave.

I am serious. Some asian countries have a day or two per month for females to stay home when they have cramps. We need the equivalent of menstrual huts for women to rest in.

But no, we females are supposed to deny our biology and drive ourselves mercilessly, like we were men.

I know some women do not feel bad during their periods. But many many girls and women have pain and severe fatigue for one to four days per month. Multiply the worst case scenario, four days, by 13 times a year (lunar calendar of 28 days) and you got 52 days a year.

Corporate America thinks the company will fall in if one peon takes off one hour a year.

And taking time to learn a new computer program, well, that's just impossible to do.

[Berry Cool]

6. There is one problem with that idea.

It is guaranteed to make de facto discrimination against women in the workplace highly popular, as employers begin to regard every potential female hire of childbearing age as someone who will have the right to two days off every month just because she feels like it--even if she's not disabled by her periods.

It's bad enough they already look at us as possibly going on leave/quitting anytime we get pregnant. Now you want to add this? No thanks. Women who have painful periods are better off staying home and lying that it's something else making them sick...if they can get away with it.

Sadly, the American workplace was built by and for men--and imposing women's unique needs on it will result only in discrimination against women. Even if we want better childcare arrangements, the best way to go about it (and actually for more reasons than this) is to make sure that they apply just as much to fathers as to mothers.

[hedgehog]

7. Back in 1970 , what you said would have been true. Women now are

a vital, if underpaid,portion of the workforce. As the population ages, women will become even more important. Women need to become convinced that they deserve to be treated as women and not as inferior versions of men, and they need to join unions to take group action.

[My Good Babushka]

8. what a bunch of quitters

I bet there was a time when everyone thought voting rights for women was never going to happen- I hope everyone writes their congress critters all the time! I do. The wheels just need to keep squeaking, and then we'll be heard, even over the lobbyists. I just can't subscribe to the fatalist 'never going to happen' mindset, because then what are we all doing here?

[Wednesdays]

9. K&R

:kick: