Stay in bed for mandatory paid sick days

The latest hub-bub in Ohio and around the country has been the push for all employers to offer paid sick days to all of their employees. The proposal, currently working its way through state legislation, is under fire because many see it as yet another area where the government is stepping into the business sector.

This may be true, but this time I am behind the intrusion as long as the lawmakers can draft a law which provides some minimum of mandatory sick days to employees, while also allowing for many of the notable exceptions included in the new minimum wage law. Hopefully it will also provide some flexibility in there as well. All that, and it has my yes vote!

This is a good idea for one simple reason. The first thing you hear from teachers and school administrators is to keep your kids home when they are sick so that whatever they have isn't spread throughout the entire school. This same principle applies to small businesses, maybe even more so because a good deal of them do not have the capacity to carry on with five employees all out since Jayne didn't stay home with pink eye because rent was due next week.