Should employers be required to proved their employees with paid sick days? Consider these facts:

<< -More than 44 million workers do not have paid sick days.
<< -Workers earning low-wages are the least likely to have paid sick days. Only 19 percent of low-wage workers have access to paid sick days.
<< -Many workers with a significant interaction with the public do not have paid sick days. This includes three in four food service workers, three in five personal health care workers and three in four child care workers.
<< -One in 6 workers have been fired or threatened with being fired for taking time off work to care for a personal or family illness. >>

Source:
http://crooksandliars.com/kenneth-quinnell/will-lack-paid-sick-days-make-mov

Even if you do not believe that the government has an interest in ensuring that employers are fair to their employees (a sentiment that seems to be common in a large segment of the Republican Party today), then surely you will concede that we are all better off and less likely to become sick ourselves if low wage food service employees are given paid sick days.

Once you require that employers give paid sick days, you'll have 88 million people abusing the fact that their employers have to give it to them. Want to see a Dodger game? Paid sick day!!!!

Josh

>Conversely, I really hate it when people show up at work sick as a dog when they have the now-common PTO (personal time off), which is the combination of vacation and sick days. Once there's no distinction, sick people show up for work, and get other people sick.

Agreed. I think we'd all be better off if everyone took a "sick" day once or twice a year, as long as they also took off when they're actually sick (and with mandatory sick days, it'd be easier to force that).

- Greminty