Business Groups Fight Against Paid Sick Leave For H1N1 Sufferers

As the House Education and Labor committee deliberates over a bill to expand paid sick leave as Americans suffer through a pandemic of the H1N1 virus, pro-business groups are fighting the bill tooth and nail.

The Huffington Post reported:

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) is pushing an emergency bill that would require employers with more than 15 workers to provide up to five days of paid sick leave. That's about the length of time it takes for H1N1 sufferers to stop being contagious, according to American Public Health Association head Georges Benjamin, who testified before Miller's committee Tuesday.

[...]

But business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, strenuously oppose the bill anyway.

Testifying on behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers Tuesday, A. Bruce Clarke, who runs his own 1,000-member business lobby in North Carolina, told Miller's committee that most businesses already have comparable or more generous paid leave programs, so why bother?

"While some employers may not have taken specific action in response to the H1N1 outbreak, these employers are clearly the exception to the widespread practices taking place today," Clarke said in his prepared testimony. "These types of creative approaches are the result of flexibility that employers have to develop policies that best fit their workforce needs."

Pat Garofalo at The Wonk Room added:

[N]early half of private sector workers have no paid sick leave. This includes 78 percent of hotel workers and 85 percent of food service workers, even though they are among the most likely to come in contact with other individuals. 68 percent of workers not eligible for paid sick days say that they had gone to work with a contagious illness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, an employee with H1N1 will infect one in 10 co-workers if he or she attends work. But without any paid sick leave, many workers can't afford to take a day off, or fear for their job if they request time off to recover.

That America's largest corporations would oppose expanding paid sick leave is hardly surprising.  Pro-business groups routinely focus only on their member corporations' bottom lines while neglecting what's best for their employees and their country. 

In times of a potential national crisis, Americans should be able to trust corporate leaders to do their part. Sadly, it seems that's not the case.