By now you’ve heard just about every possible idea for bolstering economic growth, from lowering corporate income- tax rates and pruning regulations on the one hand, to passing another round of stimulus spending on the other.
But here’s an idea you probably never thought anyone could suggest with a straight face: Let’s create jobs by hiking the cost of employing workers.
Sure, that will work.
Look, it’s one thing for supporters of Initiative 300, which is on Denver’s fall ballot, to argue that mandating paid sick leave and “safe time” for workers who currently don’t enjoy such benefits is just and humane. And it’s inevitable that those same supporters would downplay any possible economic fallout, insisting that businesses always cry wolf when facing a costly mandate — their capacity for absorbing such requirements being apparently limitless.
But backers of Initiative 300 aren’t satisfied with the normal campaign playbook. Seeking a theme for our recessionary times, they’re pushing an economic development argument, too, claiming that mandating up to 72 hours of sick pay will be an economic boon.
“Providing paid sick leave makes sense for businesses in a down economy because the resulting increase in productivity and reduced turnover saves nearly $600 a year for each full-time worker with paid sick time,” claim state Sen. Irene Aguilar and Rep. Beth McCann, both Denver Democrats, in a letter published recently in The Colorado Statesman that echoes arguments in the initiative’s text.
You might think employers would be the best judges of whether paid sick leave will save them money, but that just shows how unenlightened you are. The people in the best position to make this judgment are voters, you see, most of whom have never run a business.
The “whereas” clauses of the ballot initiative even refer to studies supposedly demonstrating that “presenteeism is a larger productivity drain than either absenteeism or short-term disability.” But of course.
Yet even if you agree that “presenteeism” is undermining our economy and that employers have no idea what’s in their best interest, Initiative 300 should still give you pause. Although most businesses typically take employees’ word on whether they’re sick, for example, sometimes they have reason for suspicion. But even then, the ordinance says, “no documentation [of an illness] may be required before three consecutive days of absence.” And afterward? No “unreasonable documentation,” whatever that means.
For that matter, the ordinance places enforcement powers in the hands of the Denver Agency for Human Rights and Community Relations, which has never enforced anything of the kind. In fact, as the city attorney points out in an analysis, “The proposed ordinance is unprecedented at the local government level in Colorado. No municipality in the state, including Denver, has ever adopted any ordinance regulating wages and benefits for private sector employers not in a direct contractual relationship with the municipality. . . . No department or agency in Denver’s administrative structure has ever been charged with overseeing the compensation policies of all employers in Denver.”
So now is supposedly the right time to put bureaucrats in charge of “overseeing the compensation policies of all employers in Denver” — a moment when the state actually shed 1,800 non-farm jobs from July to August.
Talk about unconventional economic medicine.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
