http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091101..._swine_flu_jobs

Millions without sick leave fear swine flu

By ASHLEY M. HEHER, AP Retail Writer Ashley M. Heher, Ap Retail Writer – Sun Nov 1, 2:08 pm ET
CHICAGO – For millions of Americans the rule is simple: If you don't come to work, you don't get paid.

That idea drives an untold numbers of carpenters, day care workers, servers, shopkeepers and small-business owners to their jobs each day. Sniffles or not.

As the swine flu spreads across the nation — and public health officials plead with the ill to, please, stay home in bed for several days until the fever goes away — a large segment of the American work force will face a tough choice about whether to call in sick or simply muddle through. That's because when skipping work means skipping food on the table or missing a rent payment, staying in bed isn't as simple as it sounds.

Kara Knoche, 28, is worried about getting swine flu and the money she would lose by missing a week of work. The Atlanta waitress is downing Vitamin C supplements, going out of her way to eat immune system-boosting foods and avoiding friends with the sniffles or hacking coughs.

"If you don't save up, you're basically behind and you're broke. Every dollar you make after that is probably going to go to bills," she said. "That makes for a very hard month. A person has to eat."

Across the country employers of all sizes are making contingency plans for a hard-hitting flu season.

Some business owners are cross-training employees to fill in for absent colleagues. Others are relaxing sick leave policies that require a doctor's note. (Many doctors' offices are advising swine flu patients to stay away unless their symptoms are severe to prevent overwhelming the health care system. )

Some corporations are heeding advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among their tips: moving desks farther apart, creating more shifts to have fewer people on duty at a time and reducing employee travel.

But that advice doesn't do much for many companies — particularly small businesses or those in the service industry where sick leave is almost unheard of or too costly for owners to afford.

"We don't have a real good contingency plan in place right now," said Gordon Weitzel, owner of Dayton's Chicken & Seafood in Salisbury, Md. His staff of 36 does not have sick leave.

"I've got some servers who cook, and I've got a lot of different people I can flip-flop. But it most certainly would be a hardship if 20 or 25 percent of my staff had swine flu" and stayed home, he said.

About a third of the nation's workers don't have paid sick leave, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. But even some workers who do don't take it because they fear retribution from their bosses if they don't show up.

The problem can be worse for parents who worry not just about their own health, but their children's. After all, a sick kid who got the flu from Mom or Dad can mean even more time off the job.

Kevin Huigens, 52, knows calling in sick means bringing home a smaller paycheck, or possibly none at all. As a technology contractor in suburban Chicago, his job doesn't come with sick leave or vacation time.

So what will he do if he gets sick this winter?

"If I'm well enough to sit up in bed with a laptop, I can still work," he said. "I can work from home somehow, some way. It may not even be a full eight hours, but I can get a few hours a day."

Even that might not be doable for some particularly ill patients.

Last year, Chicago real estate agent Jen Sanders was felled for five days by the seasonal flu after forgoing a flu shot for the first time in a decade. Stuck at home, she had to call other real estate agents to attend everything from home inspections to showing listings to potential buyers so she wouldn't risk losing her commission.

"It's horrible when you feel so crappy and you realize that you are losing money at the same time," she said.

This year, she made sure to get a flu shot. She'll also continue her strategy of keeping her gloves on during the height of the winter flu season when she's shaking hands.

"Every time I do a showing, I greet people," the 35-year-old said. "I try to do what I can without making other people feel awkward."

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Roscoe and Miss Priss 

At Work With the Flu

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Public health experts worried about the spread of the H1N1 flu are raising concerns that workers who deal with the public, like waiters and child care employees, are jeopardizing others by reporting to work sick because they do not get paid for days they miss for illness.

Tens of millions of people, or about 40 percent of all private-sector workers, do not receive paid sick days, and as a result many of them cannot afford to stay home when they are ill. Even some companies that provide paid sick days have policies that make it difficult to call in sick, like giving demerits each time someone misses a day.

Public health experts say policies like these encourage many people with H1N1, commonly called swine flu, to report to work despite official warnings from the government and most companies that they should stay home.

“For people who are really caught on a weekly income, if they can’t make a go of it, they might say, ‘I’m desperate. I’m going to do what I have to do, and I’m going into work even though I’m sick,’” said Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy at Harvard.

He warned that this might spread disease, and that these financially squeezed workers might send their flu-stricken children to school, infecting others.

Well before President Obama declared H1N1 a national emergency, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was emphasizing that businesses should adopt “flexible leave policies” to allow workers with the flu to stay home. In one advisory, the C.D.C. encouraged employers “to develop nonpunitive leave policies.”

Despite such recommendations, some employees say they have no choice but to go to work sick.

When Latisha Carter caught H1N1 from her 6-year-old daughter in June, she suffered headaches, chills and diarrhea, but she reported to her $13-an-hour help desk job at a Milwaukee insurer nonetheless. The temp agency that placed her does not offer her paid sick days.

“If you’re sick, they encourage you to stay home, but I couldn’t afford to take off if I wasn’t going to get paid,” said Ms. Carter, 29, who said she stuck to her small work area to avoid spreading the flu.

Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, a group of 30,000 public health professionals, said, “Providing workers with paid sick days is essential if we’re going to get serious about the public health recommendations for swine flu — stay home until 24 hours after your fever is broken. That usually takes about five days.”

For many businesses, H1N1 has created a dilemma. “This is a very difficult issue for companies,” said Nina G. Stillman, a lawyer with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius who advises companies on sick-leave policy. “Employers who do not offer sick days are not prepared to offer them now, and they recognize that this may result in not achieving what they say they would like, which is that people who are sick stay home.”

The C.D.C. says that swine flu is widespread in 48 of the 50 states and has already hit as many as 5.7 million Americans.

Many worker groups and women’s groups have seized on the H1N1 pandemic to argue that Congress should enact legislation guaranteeing paid sick days. San Francisco and Washington have enacted such legislation, but similar measures face obstacles in Congress.

“Sometimes you talk about legislation in the abstract, but this is making people begin to understand the problem,” said Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut and lead sponsor in the House of a bill, with more than 100 co-sponsors, that would require employers with 15 or more workers to provide seven paid sick days a year.

Business groups oppose such legislation, calling it expensive and unnecessary. They say that employers already allow and even encourage sick employees to stay home.

“The vast majority of employers provide paid leave of some sort,” said Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “The problem is not nearly as great as some people say. Lots of employers work these things out on an ad hoc basis with their employees.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39 percent of private-sector workers do not receive paid sick leave.

Workers at many retailers and restaurants say their employers’ policies discourage them from calling in sick. At Wal-Mart, when employees miss one or more days because of illness or other reasons, they generally get a demerit point. Once employees obtain four points over a six-month period, they begin receiving warnings that can lead to dismissal.

In addition, when Wal-Mart employees call in sick, their first day off is not a paid sick day (although workers can use a vacation day or personal day), but the second and third days are paid. The policy is meant to keep workers who are not actually sick from taking a day off to, say, go fishing.

Paul Hotchkiss, a support manager at a Wal-Mart store in Hastings, Minn., said the point system pressured him to report to work two weeks ago even though he had swine flu.

“There are a lot of people who have swine flu right now who are going in because they worry about getting fired for having too many points,” Mr. Hotchkiss said.

His supervisor sent him home because he looked pale, he said, adding that he did not see a doctor because he could not afford the company’s health insurance.

Wal-Mart officials say the company insists that workers with H1N1 stay home and has policies making it easy to do so.

Mandy Pillar, a nurse at Linwood Elementary School in Wichita, Kan., said more than 20 percent of the students were out sick when H1N1 swept through two weeks ago.

“We were sending 12 and 15 kids home a day with fever,” she said. “The next day they’d be back. They’d say, ‘I still feel bad. I still have a fever.’ So we’d ask, ‘Why are you back here?’ And they’d say, ‘because Mommy had to work.’ ”

A survey last year by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that 68 percent of those not eligible for paid sick days said they had gone to work with a contagious illness like the flu, while 53 percent eligible for paid sick days said they had done so.

That survey found that 11 percent of respondents said that they had lost a job for taking off for an illness for themselves or a family member, and 13 percent said they had been told they would be fired or suspended if they missed work because of personal or family illness.

Ricardo Copantitla, a food server at Thalassa, a restaurant in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan, said he called in sick last year when he had the seasonal flu, not H1N1.

“The restaurant said you have to come to work, because they were short of people,” he said. “I had a bad cough, and I felt tired and terrible. But I went to work because I feared being fired.”

Thalassa did not respond to phone and e-mail requests for comment.

Like many restaurant chains, White Castle, which runs 421 hamburger restaurants nationwide, says it takes H1N1 seriously.

“Our policy is that when team members experience illness, we require that they stay home until they are feeling better,” said Jamie Richardson, White Castle’s vice president for corporate relations. “Our policy provides for time off as people need it.”

White Castle does not provide paid sick days, he acknowledged, but he said that workers who stayed home sick would not suffer lost pay because they could work extra hours after recovering.

Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, said H1N1 had spurred an attitude shift throughout corporate America.

“Before, people looked askance at absenteeism — someone staying out was a problem to the company,” she said. “There was this view that being sick was malingering. But now if someone comes in sick — and there has been subtle pressure to do this — you worry that you can get something very dangerous. You worry that you could bring it home to your children, to your elderly parent, to your husband or wife.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/b...ed=2&ref=health

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Being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect.
It means you decide to see beyond the imperfections.
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Live each day as if there is World enough and Time~
Arubi 

http://www.reuters.com/article/heal...E59J58H20091104

Proposed law would require pay for sick workers
Wed Nov 4, 2009 9:14am EST

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers who tell workers to stay home when they are sick will have to give them paid time off for up to five days under new federal legislation proposed on Tuesday.

The emergency law would cover pandemic H1N1 flu or any other infectious disease, said California Representative George Miller, a Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee and who introduced the bill.

"Sick workers advised to stay home by their employers shouldn't have to choose between their livelihood, and their co-workers' or customers' health," Miller said.

"This will not only protect employees, but it will save employers money by ensuring that sick employees don't spread infection to co-workers and customers, and will relieve the financial burden on our health system swamped by those suffering from H1N1."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises employers to encourage sick workers to stay home so they do not spread H1N1. "But workers have been reporting that many of them are either afraid or cannot afford to take time off," Miller told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Paid sick leave is not required by U.S. laws.

Miller said the committee would hold a hearing the week of November 16 and he would press to have a full vote as soon as possible.

Miller said at least 50 million American workers are not paid for time taken off sick, "many in lower-wage jobs that have direct contact with the public such as the food-service and hospitality industry, schools and health care fields."

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Roscoe and Miss Priss 

They'll find away around it. Like saying "we suggest, but aren't telling you to stay home"

__________________
Being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect.
It means you decide to see beyond the imperfections.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Live each day as if there is World enough and Time~
Arubi 

I see infectious patients quite frequently and about 50% of the time they go stright back to work. Where I live, unemployment is over 14% and layoffs occur about every 3 weeks. No one wants to look like a slacker. They are afraid they will be next.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091110...0b3JzZGVi YQ--

Senators debate requiring U.S. sick leave for flu

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Maggie Fox, Health And Science Editor – 1 hr 39 mins ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A proposed U.S. law requiring employers to provide paid sick leave would help stop the spread of swine flu and increase productivity, supporters argued on Tuesday.

But Republican Senator Mike Enzi said such a bill would hit small businesses just at a time when they need help creating new jobs, and might even end up costing jobs.

Members of a Senate committee that helps craft such laws discussed the proposed emergency legislation from Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, which is similar to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives intended to ensure that sick employees do not spread the virus to others.

"Coming down with H1N1 means you have to make a choice either go into work sick and risk infecting co-workers, or stay at home and risk of course losing a day's pay," Dodd told a hearing of a health and labor subcommittee.

Health officials have been urging anyone with flu-like symptoms such as cough and fever to stay home to avoid spreading it. But Representative Rosa DeLauro, invited to speak at the hearing, said 57 million Americans do not get paid leave, or even sometimes unpaid leave, to stay home sick or to care for sick relatives.

Dodd said three-quarters of them work in food and service industries and endanger not only co-workers, but the public.

"Food service is not an industry where we want workers showing up with contagious viral infections," DeLauro added.

There is no federal law requiring employers to provide sick leave and it is legal to discipline or even fire a worker for calling in sick.

"Our system forces too many sick workers to go to work and too many parents to send sick children to school and daycare," said Seth Harris of the U.S. Department of Labor.

But Enzi said the recession made him worry about any proposed legislation that might cost employers money -- noting the 10.2 percent unemployment rate. "This is not the time to compound problems," he said.

Details of Dodd's legislation were not available but the House bill would cover pandemic H1N1 flu or any other infectious disease.

The H1N1 virus has infected millions globally, with more than 6,000 documented deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 5 million Americans have been infected.

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Roscoe and Miss Priss 

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasu...ave_po.php#more

Swine flu and US sick leave policy: the company we keep
Category: Health care • Occupational health • Pandemic preparedness • Progressive public health • Public health preparedness • Swine flu
Posted on: November 12, 2009 6:05 AM, by revere

I don't know if the rest of the world laughs at the US, but I feel quite sure they at least shake their collective heads when they hear how we lack one of the most important non-pharmaceutical measures against pandemic flu: paid sick leave. Of course only those countries with a policy of paid sick leave would be shaking their heads. It turns out, though, that's just about everybody:

There are an estimated 57 million private sector workers without sick leave who are much more likely to go to work while sick or send their children to school when they are sick. The attack rate for this virus isn't know with certainty, but CDC is using a reasonable estimate of 10% of workplace contacts. It might be more or it might be less but it is avoidable. Dodd has introduced emergency legislation to require paid sick days for influenza, but it's not likely to pass nor is it any where near sufficient. Republicans have already announced their opposition on the grounds it would hurt an "already aching economy." I guess it's better that workers ache than some hypothetical business somewhere. But since businesses aren't people, they don't really ache. Just the people who work in them do.

And when they get sick, they aren't productive and they make others sick. If we toted up the lost productivity I'm guessing it would pay for sick leave many times over. But if it didn't? Wouldn't it still be the right thing to do?

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Roscoe and Miss Priss 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/co...ov1709sick.html

Sick-leave standard as anti-flu weapon stirs debate
Maryn McKenna Contributing Writer


Nov 17, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – Making paid sick leave a national standard is crucial to controlling the H1N1 pandemic and future epidemics, public health and business experts told Congress Tuesday. But others cautioned that forcing businesses to follow federal mandates will make them pay extra costs in a recession and could depress future hiring and investment.

The experts made their remarks at a hearing of the US House of Representatives' Education and Labor Committee. The committee's chairman, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., 2 weeks ago introduced the Emergency Influenza Containment Act (HR 3991), which would guarantee any worker who is sick with flu up to 5 days paid leave.

Miller's is the second bill now before Congress that would guarantee paid sick leave. The first, the Healthy Families Act (HR 2460, S. 1152), has been introduced repeatedly for several years by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., but has been given fresh life by the H1N1 pandemic.

The H1N1 pandemic has brought paid sick leave into sharp focus. (Paid sick days accompanied by job protection are not required under US law except for the federal workforce, though the Family and Medical Leave Act mandates unpaid leave.) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that a flu-infected person who comes to work may infect up to 10 others, and a 2004 report by Emory University estimated that sick workers cost the economy $180 billion each year in lost productivity.

Definition disputed
The topic is contentious and even the definition and reach of "sick leave" are disputed. The National Compensation Survey, published by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, estimates that employers give more than two-thirds of US workers some number of paid sick days, but the survey includes "personal time off" and vacation days in its definition. The Institute for Women's Policy Research estimates that four-fifths of low-wage workers lack defined paid sick days, a situation that is more likely to impact women, minorities and young workers who are on the lower end of pay scales—categories that happen to match those most at risk from H1N1 flu.

"Workers fear they will be punished for taking time off, either by losing pay because they do not have paid sick days or even fired," Rep. Miller said Tuesday in the hearing's opening remarks. "Employees in the food-service and hospitality industry, schools and healthcare fields are among those who cannot afford to stay home when they're sick. Because these employees have direct contact with the public, the consequences of coming into work sick are not only damaging to their health, but could be damaging for the public's health as well."

But Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the committee's ranking Republican, cautioned in his opening statements that "federal mandates are particularly onerous for small businesses" and warned that imposing new requirements could force businesses to cancel current, more flexible leave plans.

CDC, APHA weigh in
Representatives of the CDC and the American Public Health Association (APHA) testified that they support measures that will encourage workers to stay home from work if they believe themselves to be ill.

"Employed adults 18 years of age and over experienced an average of 4.4 work-loss days per person due to illness or injury in the past 12 months, for a total of approximately 698 million work-loss days," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. While careful not to endorse Miller's bill, she said in response to lawmakers' questions, "Whatever will make it easy for people to do the right thing, is what we are promoting."

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the APHA, strongly backed paid sick leave, calling it good for businesses, workers and their families, customers, and the general public. He drew a link between sick-leave policies and pandemic-preparedness plans. "We've come a long way in being prepared for public health emergencies such as an H1N1 flu outbreak, but we have more work to do to protect America's health," he said. "Paid sick leave for employees is one important next step."

But agreeing to provide sick leave triggers a swarm of complexities, said A. Bruce Clarke, president and CEO of Capital Associated Industries, a North Carolina non-profit with 1,000 member businesses. "The marginal perceived visible benefit of a proposed national mandate will create far more invisible and unintended detriments," he said.

Current flexible personal-time plans, Clarke said, allow employees to stay home for their own illness or to care for a sick family member, and also protect employees' privacy because they do not have to disclose either living arrangements or medical details to employers.

While Miller's bill (which applies only to businesses with 15 employees or more) provides a "safe harbor" provision for companies with existing leave plans, Clarke said plans vary so much from business to business that most of his organization's members would have to rewrite their plans to comply.

But Debra Ness, speaking for the National Partnership for Women and Families, countered that flexible plans do not go far enough to protect workers in a public health emergency, precisely because they vary so much from employer to employer. Instead, she said, the country needs a national standard of 7 days per year of paid sick leave, accompanied by job protection and separate from vacation time, that can be used by workers on their own behalf or a family member's.

Crucially, she said, workers should be able to invoke the leave themselves, rather than having to report to work in order to be sent home, because commuting to work and appearing at the workplace are potential infection risks. And ideally, she said, such sick-leave protection should extend to businesses of all sizes, and should cover illness-related actions beyond a worker's family such as closure of a child's school due to H1N1.

See also:

Nov 17 House Education and Labor Committee Hearing
http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/2...employers.shtml

Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/

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Roscoe and Miss Priss