Face the Facts: Bill would mandate sick time for all workers

Sick days - most of us get them so we can get well and not lose our wages during time off. But not all smaller companies offer sick days like restaurants, mom and pop retail businesses and others.

But that's about to change after the House passed a bill that would mandate companies offer 40 hours of sick time per year.

Again, it's accrued, good for workers. But how can this affect small businesses?

House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora (R-North Branford), a small business owner, explains the concerns his fellow Republicans, and even some Democrats, have about the plan.

Mike Hydeck: So first up, if and when this goes through, and it's likely that it's going to go through is what we understand, how would it affect your business? You have a small business, your sports complex.

Vincent Candelora: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple problems with it, the way it impacts you. It not only dictates the 40 hours a week, which I think most businesses give some time paid off. It dictates how you give it and for what reasons, you know. And so that's where businesses are going to have to calculate for every 30 hours somebody works, they get one hour of paid sick time. And it's not just traditionally where somebody calls up and says 'I'm sick, I need to stay out.' People could just come into your office and say 'I need to leave for an hour, I don't feel well,' or 'I need a mental health day, I need to leave for two hours.' So it's a little bit more disruptive than the traditional notion of a sick day. And businesses are going to have to comply. So if you're in an industry that has like daycares, where you have student teacher ratios, if somebody goes and leaves, now you're out of compliance with state law. How do you replace that worker? So it's a very one size fits all kind of bill, and it really micromanages businesses.

Mike Hydeck: And the compliance would be challenging, it sounds like, too. I guess it would have to be like a pattern of things and then maybe put somebody can put a complaint in?

Vincent Candelora: That's right.

Mike Hydeck: You made the argument this week that moderates are downplaying the impact this will have. So you just mentioned some of the impact. How would you like to see it maybe implemented in a different way if it were possible? Obviously, it doesn't sound like it. But if you could change things, what would you change?

Vincent Candelora: Yeah, I mean, I think that first off, kind of leave it to the higher business threshold. You know, I'm concerned, and it will be phased in over time, but the smaller businesses aren't going to be able to replace a worker on a moment's notice. I would have liked to have seen it be just more broad, where a sick day is a sick day; it's not an hour, it's not two hours, and not writing in mental health days, because that opens up the whole door for people just to say 'I want a personal day off.' And that really has impacted businesses. I think, I don't have constituents calling me saying this is something I wanted. I think that employers and employees have good relationships, and we should just stay out of it as a state.

Mike Hydeck: Do you believe if it is enacted, and it starts moving forward, that it could be adjusted in the future if we find things don't work? The governors often say, 'look, we can just adjust.' I don't know how easy that is.

Vincent Candelora: Well, it's frustrating because they're not adjusting paid sick leave. They implemented that program, there's a $700 million surplus of employee money that's sitting there, coming out of the paycheck, they're not adjusting that, they're just letting the surplus accumulate, over a third of the applicants are being denied. So people aren't getting the benefits of paid family medical leave. We should be looking at the program saying, 'how can we make that easier for our residents?'

Mike Hydeck: So to play devil's advocate for a second. In some respects, big picture, there is an argument to be made for example, a case in point, say someone owns a cleaning company with 25 or 30 employees. They clean some of the apartment buildings or they clean some of the towers in Hartford. They don't have sick days. One of their cleaners comes in and touches a coffeemaker. Now they have the flu, and the whole company loses productivity because the flu ripped through. Couldn't the bigger picture be, it would probably save money in the long run at that big company, because productivity would stay up if that one person stayed home.

Vincent Candelora: So I'm not sure a company like that wouldn't offer sick days. I think the bigger issue is we can't control when people are going to take this time off. But this bill goes much broader. It's not sick days, it's really personal time off. And I would say let's take paid family medical leave, make it easier for people. So if you are in fact sick, you could utilize that program that you've paid into to get your money back. So if it's one day, two days or five days, let's have that pay program pay for it, rather than creating another one.

Mike Hydeck: Is there any appetite to look into that? Or you've not heard back on trying?

Vincent Candelora: No. We've tried to reform that program and nobody, you know, I worry because anytime there's a slush fund with that kind of money, it's going to be a billion dollars before we know it. I'm worried that that money is going to get diverted into the budget for something else.

Mike Hydeck: So do you think this decision, if it passes and again, it looks like it's going to, could have election consequences? Working Families group for one implied, and I read this in the Mirror, people who didn't vote for the bill, they were going to try to primary them coming up. Do you feel like that's going to have an issue moving forward? Or you don't think so?

Vincent Candelora: I think for Democrats, you know, that would be the concern because the Working Family party really tries to have a chokehold on the Democrats and make sure that there's not a free system here of debate. I think if people were left to their own devices, that vote would have turned out differently. So it's never good optics for the state of Connecticut when there's those kinds of threats when you're debating a very substantive bill. But I don't think there's going to be an impact in Connecticut on this issue. People really don't seem to care about it, frankly.