sick days

H1N1 has kicked off a discussion in Congress about sick leave.  Some of this talk is specific to this flu, or the way specific employers deal with sick time, and I'm not going to address that.

But I do want to point out that, like everything else in your personal arrangement with your employer, sick time comes out of your earnings.  Even if Congress "guarantees" it.  In fact, what's billed as a guarantee that employers "give" you sick pay is really a mandate that you purchase it.

It's true that if you don't receive sick pay now your employer can add it without any visible cost to you.  However, at that point the policy becomes part of your compensation package, and the money available for future raises, hiring decisions, and even work scheduling will all be reduced by some small amount.  By the time you receive your next raise or move on to your next job, sick time will be coming out of your pocket.

Some of the best-paid workers are straight commission salespeople.  If they don't sell they don't eat, but on the other hand there's no limit to how much money they can make.  Many people wouldn't take that deal.  It doesn't mean those people can't sell, but it does say something about what they're willing to pay for security.  If the company has a bad month you might still get paid, but that's not some "gift" from your employer.  It's really just money set aside from the good months, earned by you, during periods when your wages did not fully reflect your productivity.

I mention this because some employers have moved away from classifying paid time off.  Instead of offering sick days and personal days, they simply offer a fixed number of paid days off.  After those are exhausted, time-off comes out of your pay.  But days you don't take off for illness are days you can spend on yourself.

Of course, if some employees take all their time-off and others don't, then technically the working employees are subsidizing the employees who take breaks.  The most honest arrangements allow workers to carry paid time off forward to the next year, or perhaps your employer buys your unused days back from you -- essentially giving you wages for the days you worked when you could have taken off.  And by "honest" I don't mean that employers and employees are necessarily trying to rip each other off, but that we're all better at making decisions when the costs and benefits are as transparent as possible.