What’s In the Plan?
- Coverage for Everyone: The previous Covid package excluded businesses with under 50 employees as well as companies with more than 500 workers. Gig workers and self-employed will get tax credits.
- How Much: Workers’ wages up to $1,400 a week, or $280 a day. That covers about making up to $73,000, about three-fourths of workers. Last years’ plan was up to $511 per day but limited to two weeks.
- How Long: Up to 14 weeks or more of paid leave.
- Who Pays: Employers with fewer than 500 workers will receive a payroll tax credit. Large corporations will foot the bill. As of now, just one quarter of companies with more than 500 employees provide some sort of family leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics
- What’s Changed: Also, under a 1993 law, workers are eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid family and medical leave, but roughly half of workers don’t qualify (for example, if they have worked at their employer for less than a year, or if the company has fewer than 50 people). Residents of 15 states and about eight in 10 employees over all have paid sick leave. But the period of leave is often several days, not weeks, and low-income, Black and Latino workers are less likely to have it.
Details condensed from How Biden’s Proposed Paid Leave Would Work.
What’s Wrong?
- Cash Flow Issues: Small businesses, especially tiny businesses have to pay workers who don’t show up, potentially for as long as 14 weeks. They would have to find replacement workers and the same thing can happen repeatedly. This creates a huge potential cash flow problem.
- Massive Opportunity for Fraud: The setup is rife for fraud two ways. Employees can take advantage of free vacations. And employers of family-run businesses can pay daughter Susie and son Sam at government (taxpayer) expense when perhaps neither of them is sick.
- Uncertainty: How long will someone be gone? Will it be a week or 14? It matters.
- Training: If someone is gone for 14 weeks you have to train a new employee. That’s an expense.
- Returning Issues: After 14 week the employee want to return. To what? A small business already replaced that worker and doesn’t need another employee. If you fire them they may file a lawsuit and/or there are unemployment payments to deal with.
Mish
Can we call this Trumpism on steroids?
“The setup is rife for fraud two ways. Employees can take advantage of free vacations. And employers of family-run businesses can pay daughter Susie and son Sam at government (taxpayer) expense when perhaps neither of them is sick.”
In Germany they have a very liberal sick time policy but you do need a doctors note. That seems like a pretty simple fix for your fraud concerns.
You next question is about doctors writing dubious notes. They would be dealt with the same as doctors writing dubious prescriptions.
Was this paid leave is a pipe dream? Either that or employers are not telling employees about it. I know plenty of people including my self who had COVID and had to use their own vacation time while sick or quarantined.
Mish is right, somebody filed for unemployment benefits for me while I was at the office! We still do not know who…
I’d like to know how you found out, that’s disturbing.
As an employer, I’d get notification whenever any of my employees (and even former employees, if they had worked for me in the last 15 months) filed for UI benefits.
They charge it against my company’s account and jack my insurance rates, so they need to notify me and give me a chance to dispute. As an example, I had an employee quit to work somewhere else, get fired early at the new employer, then file for UI. She hadn’t worked for me in 13 months. I disputed that and they relieved my company of any liability for her.
If I had an actively working employee and the state notified me that they’d filed for UI, I’d certainly contact them about it. Moreover, here in OR, they’d immediately notify the employee the next time I filed payroll taxes — the letter is something along the lines of, “hey, your employer just paid you and notified us of it when they filed their payroll taxes. we’re denying your claim until you contact us to let us know what’s going on.”
If a sick person comes to work and infects several others the cost to the employer will be far worse. Any employer who opposes this is giulty of short termism. Like shooting one’s nose to spite one’s face
Employers have a really hard time letting their production ‘numbers’ slip. I seen one boss bitch about someone having covid, shaking his head and walking off.
I can’t speak for other employers, but I really didn’t want my sick employees coming to work.
It’s a matter of abuse. Many employees lie and abuse every benefit. The CARES Act prevented employers from asking for a doc’s note. Some employees never take a sick day. Others will magically get sick exactly as many paid sick days as they have accrued each year.
i think the problem that’s being addressed are low skilled workers. these are extra-ordinary times. there wouldn’t be the same need for this legislation if not for the pandemic
If workers are sick they should stay home. Period!
Employees calling in sick on Monday morning should be canceled.
we have this problem too. employees calling out sick on monday or friday looking to extend a weekend while coming to work sick , but that’s a separate problem
Does the employee benefit if covid exposed or covid positive workers show up at the workplace? Sometimes the parties involved need a gentle shove or incentive to do what makes sense. This should have been done a year ago. Think of the meat plants where transmission rates were way too high. Workers came to work sick unable to turn down the pay check
Both the problems you listed will no doubt be problems for us.
Not looking forward to dealing with this, especially when it gets filtered down to the state level, where employers are generally considered the bad guys in disputes with employees over pay and time off.. Guilty until proven innocent.
We already have a hard time holding jobs for women having babies…..for even a month. We literally have to replace people the day they step out…..and then when they come back you have one employee you don’t need….but no way to get rid ro them without paying unemployment.
We literally have to replace people the day they step out…..and then when they come back you have one employee you don’t need….but no way to get rid ro them without paying unemployment.
I did not think of that – going to make it problem 3
Added issues 3, 4, and 5 from Eddie’s comment
You don’t have temp agencies where you are?
It’s hard to get temps…especially well-trained ones who can roll with my team. We run a more difficult schedule than most dental offices….we do a very large variety of treatment, and it takes us time to get someone up to speed.
Temps in our field,too, are often people who don’t want to work a full schedule. Good ones are in demand and they can pretty much write their own ticket doing one-day fill-ins.
If I have to get a temp, my production day is going to be sub-par. Always.
And temp agencies butt-rape us on costs.
I don’t like temps….I like employees who show up and don’t play the sick card….I don’t want sick people at work….but I know damn well a majority of call-ins are bogus….just like the one I got this morning. Monday morning disease.
Quickest way to lose a job with me.
On the flip side it does suck that many people that are sick are still going to work spreading more covid around and giving you more of a chance to catch it. I don’t know if it’s true but i’ve heard stories from people at large corps like fedex who are told to get their ass to work even if they’re sick. Would be no surprise at all. We’ve had a couple cases where I work. When it first started they’d clean and send everyone home. Now people just disappear and not a word from anyone or nothing at all done about it.
I’m so clueless.
Didn’t know I could get a $1400/week credit for 14 weeks, with a tradeoff of 2% fatality risk.
Maybe now I understand why some groups are dead-set against wearing masks.
The case fatality rate is 0.7% here, but it still isn’t much of a motivation. I didn’t hate work that much.
While my comment was strictly humor, the actual number is 3%, but that excludes asymptomatic carriers who are never diagnosed.
Your number would imply 77%, almost 4 out of 5, go undiagnosed. I suspect we’d have long been to herd immunity by now in that case, hospital surges imply otherwise.
Source – link to worldometers.info
Undoubtedly the average number of sick days per year will rise. In Europe paid sick leave has been compulsory for some time but the average number of days per year taken varies considerably, and it’s obviously not totally due to the healthiness of individual countries. In the EU the employer picks up the full tab, although the statutory requirement (in the UK anyway) is relatively low.