Businesses Balk at Paid Sick Leave Proposal

You want to improve public health?

The best way to do that, says Nikki Murphy of the New Hampshire Women’s Lobby, is to pay people to stay away from work if they’re ill.

TAPE: a lot of people who lack paid sick days are people in jobs that have a lot of contact with the public...elder care workers, childcare workers, restaurant workers....and they are coughing on our food and taking care of our kids and elderly parents. So it’s very much a public health issue.

House Bill 662 would require businesses with more than 10 workers to provide up to five paid sick days to those employees with more than six months on the job.

To bolster their case, bill supporters have armed themselves with data from Human Impact Partners, a non-profit that promotes health in public policy.

According to the organization, in 2007, only half of all New Hampshire businesses offered paid sick leave to full-time employees, and only 20% to part-timers.

And now that federal, state and local public health officials prepare for a possible swine flu pandemic Representative Carla Skinder says the legislation takes on a greater degree of urgency.

TAPE: There’s a real concern now, I have a sick child, now what if I get sick, I am not going to be able to work. I am going to be taking care of my sick child, it’s just a double whammy.

TAPE: our fear is we are taking a long term piece of legislation and we are potentially going to sneak it in under the cover of H1N1 pandemic.

That’s head of New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association Mike Somers.

Somer’s members, in particular, are in the crosshairs in this debate with only 24% providing paid sick days to full-time employees.

He says his members have already taken steps to prepare for a possible pandemic, by instituting hand washing policies and encouraging workers to stay home and get medical attention if necessary.

But, Somers says, mandating paid sick time won’t help businesses, especially right now.

TAPE: in the last 12-18 months, revenues are down substantially for most of my operations. You are looking at rising costs, whether it be healthcare, unemployment tax, increase to the rooms and meals tax...I mean we could go on all day.

But to the head of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, Kevin Westlye, the policy makes sense.

TAPE: I think restaurants take pride in the way they handle their food. Temperature control, sanitation...and I think this is another example of that. I think it would be pretty hard to argue that there shouldn’t be a high standard for restaurant employees in terms of personal sanitation and part of that would be a sick pay policy.

San Francisco is one of three cities to pass local paid sick leave ordinance in the country.

Congress has taken up a proposal.

And New Hampshire is one of 14 states currently considering the measure.

The bill’s passage, here, is far from guaranteed.

Like the state’s Restaurant and Lodging Association, the Business and Industry Association opposes the idea.

A House sub-committee is expected to report findings back to the full House Labor Committee this fall.

But life events- namely how severe or mild the swine flu hits - could be more of a deciding factor than any lobbying group.

And while the state Department of Health and Human Services has yet to take a position on the legislation, Public Health Director Jose Montero knows one thing for certain.

TAPE: right now for this pandemic we are facing we need ot find an alternative that allows parents to stay home if their kids are sick or for general for people not to go to work if they are infectious.