Sen. Brown pushes federal bill requiring paid sick days

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown announced Wednesday that he will co-sponsor a bill that would require all companies with more than 15 employers to provider as many as seven paid sick days per year (Source: "Federal bill pushes for business to offer paid sick leave," Dayton Daily News, Jan. 30, 2013).

Using the recent widespread flu outbreak as an example, Brown said that “When workers without paid sick leave or paid sick days don’t have that option (of staying home), many, many more of us are exposed.”

Critics of the bill say that businesses should be able to decide for themselves how much sick time to give employees.

“Once again it is government getting in between the employer and doing what that employer thinks is best for his or her employees, and basically running business from Washington, D.C.,” said Tony Seegers, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s director of labor and human resources policy.

“Nobody is against sick leave,” he added. “But those small businesses that are a backbone of our economy really can’t withstand provisions that would threaten pay, benefits and jobs.”

According to the National Partnership for Women & Families, an Washington D.C.-based organization that advocates for paid sick leave, about 40 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S., and more than 80 percent of low-wage workers, do not have paid sick days. The partnership also estimates that adults without paid sick days are 1.5 times more likely than adults with sick leave to report going to work with a contagious illness.