Millions Of California Workers Are About To Get Paid Sick Days (San Diego: 2014, apartments)

[SHABAZZ310]

Me personally I would never work at a job that doesn't provide paid sick days. This is is defiantly good for workers in California...

In the largest expansion of its kind to date, the state of California on Wednesday extended paid sick leave to millions of workers who would otherwise have to choose between a day's pay and working while ill.

Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) signed a bill making California the only state other than Connecticut to have a sick-leave mandate on its books. Under the law, employers will have to let workers accrue one hour of sick time for every 30 hours they work, to be capped at three days per year at employers' discretion.

"Whether you're a dishwasher in San Diego or a store clerk in Oakland, this bill frees you of having to choose between your family's health and your job," Brown said in a statement.

Millions Of California Workers Are About To Get Paid Sick Days

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Sheesh, this is barely better than nothing. 3 sick days a year? Big whoop.

They'll still be going to work sick. Hello pandemic.

This is a truly pitiful excuse of a labor law.

[BeauCharles]

Only place I ever worked that provided a decent sick day policy was the concessionaire in Yosemite. You accrued .8 sick days every month, which amounted to ten per year. This was in addition to paid vacation time which was two weeks after the first year and three weeks after five years. If after a year the sick days were unused you could include them into vacation time or cash them out. We could thank the union for that setup.

[JGC97]

Originally Posted by BeauCharles

Only place I ever worked that provided a decent sick day policy was the concessionaire in Yosemite. You accrued .8 sick days every month, which amounted to ten per year. This was in addition to paid vacation time which was two weeks after the first year and three weeks after five years. If after a year the sick days were unused you could include them into vacation time or cash them out. We could thank the union for that setup.

I had the same thing except employees could accrue sick leave for years. If there was still sick leave "on the books" at the time the employee retired, eight SL hours would convert into a month of medical coverage. There were some who had over 6,000 hours of sick leave when they retired.

[GatsbyGatz]

While some people will obviously abuse sick day leave, I think it's pretty safe to say most people have 3 days a year where they feel like garbage. So in general, this is just a pretty decent law. Not much else to say.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by SHABAZZ310

Me personally I would never work at a job that doesn't provide paid sick days. This is is defiantly good for workers in California...



Millions Of California Workers Are About To Get Paid Sick Days

I'm sure it isn't defiantly good for CA workers. Some would say it definitely is good for CA workers.

I don't think it's either. Requiring benefits raises the cost of labor. That means employers will make do with less labor or push the costs onto you and I, the consumers (or some combination of both). They may also pay employees further up the pay chain a bit less (aka "wage compression") to make up for it. Profits may get squeezed, but a lot of the businesses offering minimal to no benefits have very low profit margins (3% - 4% is typical in low wage industries)...which means there's little profit to squeeze out.

It does nothing to solve the underlying economic problems we have:

--A slow growing economy (faster growth=more jobs=more of an 'employees' market' than an 'employers' market)

--A chronic undersupply of housing, esp. in coastal metro areas, which makes it hard to make ends meet on lower wages.

--Poor mass transit options (and poor planning...i.e. apartments not located on transit lines...which makes it hard for people to do without cars)...which also make it hard to make ends meet for low wage workers (and even for higher paid workers).

http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_...ss-divide.html


One reason for California’s widening class divide is that, for a decade or longer, the state’s progressives have fostered a tax environment that slows job creation, particularly for the middle and working classes.

Still more troubling to California employers is the state’s regulatory environment. California labor laws, a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce study revealed, are among the most complex in the nation.

California’s legal climate is the fifth-worst in the nation, according to the Institute for Legal Reform; firms face far higher risks of nuisance and other lawsuits from employees than in most other places.


Oh, and the guy saying this stuff is a liberal Democrat who voted for Brown....so please no "greedy right wing Republican nut job" name calling.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

Requiring benefits raises the cost of labor. That means employers will make do with less labor or push the costs onto you and I, the consumers (or some combination of both). They may also pay employees further up the pay chain a bit less (aka "wage compression") to make up for it. Profits may get squeezed, but a lot of the businesses offering minimal to no benefits have very low profit margins (3% - 4% is typical in low wage industries)...which means there's little profit to squeeze out..

Whoa! Let's just stop your rant right at the top.

"Employers will make do with less labor"?
Employers ALWAYS make do with the least labor possible. They don't carry surplus labor when there are NO benefits either. Not if they know their arses from their elbows.

Employers will" "push the costs onto you and I, the consumers"?"?
ALL costs of doing business are ALWAYS part of the end price paid by the consumers. That's how it works. How else?

Lots of companies, and governments, have provided sick leave in the past and economies thrived fine, regardless. There's nothing new about this.

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Whoa! Let's just stop your rant right at the top.

"Employers will make do with less labor"?
Employers ALWAYS make do with the least labor possible. They don't carry surplus labor when there are NO benefits either. Not if they know their arses from their elbows.

Cost pressure means they will find more ways to make do with less. No employer makes perfectly efficient use of labor and/or can't find more ways to increase labor productivity. If they feel costs are low, they aren't going to put as much attention on it. People tend to innovate when pushed...this type of innovation can push people with low levels of skill out of the labor force.

Employers will" "push the costs onto you and I, the consumers"?"?
ALL costs of doing business are ALWAYS part of the end price paid by the consumers. That's how it works. How else?[/quote]

Lots of people who advocate for these sorts of laws live under the illusion that employers will absorb all the costs.

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Lots of companies, and governments, have provided sick leave in the past and economies thrived fine, regardless. There's nothing new about this.

Typically, high wage, high profit margin industries or the government. I work in the public sector and am kind of embarrassed at how much sick leave we get.

We will never agree. You are of the mindset that one more law, one more regulation won't hurt anything. That mentality is how California got to be such a high cost of living state in the first place. It isn't any single law that does it, but the totality of them (not just labor laws, but lots of others, too). Since the law is invisible to most who don't have to deal with it directly, your average wage and salay worker (85% of the population) who has never run a business acts as if they are no big deal on the one hand....and then they complain about the cost of living on the other....never making the connection between the two.

[tikkasf]

I think it is well understood that a business will at some point pass increased costs of running the business to the consumer. There are also can be a cost associated with a employee pushing him or herself to come into work when ill. Putting other employees at risk if the illness can be passed on and as a customer, I would be willing to pay a little extra for my cappuccino at the cafe for someone to have some sick leave and not put me or others at risk.....
I would agree that California is somewhat over regulated though

[mysticaltyger]

I would be more open to mandating a benefit like this if the state were to loosen up rules/regulations in some other areas, but that never happens.