When I'm sick, I stay home. I always figure the last thing anyone needs is my germs, especially in a business where you share microphones with other people. Ben, on the other hand, comes to work when he is feverish, coughing, oozing snot from every orifice and in need of oxygen!

I appreciate the fact that he is a trooper about getting to work, but considering the fact that he himself is a germaphobe, I want to know why he thinks it is okay to spread his around and always tell him to stay home! Fortunately our company, allows us PTO (paid time off). Unfortunately, most of us like to use that for vacation, not for a cold or even worse, the flu, so consequently numerous people come to work when they are miserably ill.

Now there is a new study from Cornell and the Swiss Economic Institute which indicates that if we had a national paid sick leave law that the influenza rate in the U.S. would decline by 5%. A Cornell economist who co-authored the study said that it was very basic in nature, "when you mandate paid sick leave, infection rates go down".

Opponents to government-mandated sick leave argue that this would amount to a job-killing move, but there is very little evidence to support that claim. In fact, the case can be made that not giving workers paid time off can be a people-killer, considering that thousands of Americans die every year from the flu.

The flu costs our country around $87 billion a year according to the CDC, which still recommends the flu vaccine as the best way to prevent the spread of the disease. The Bureau of Labor Statistics approximates that only 53% of the workers in the U.S. have paid sick leave. The truth is that the United States is the only wealthy country which does not have a paid sick leave mandate in place and perhaps, just perhaps, we need to give that some further thought.

Facts and figures gathered in an article from Huffpost Business.

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