I believe that any bill regarding sick pay should be written so that it does not create an additional burden upon the employer.
An employee should have the right to garnish a percentage of their pay into a sick pay fund so that over the course of their time at work they build paid time off for illness. Now if an employer wishes to contribute to such funds I believe it should not be a mandatory requirement on their part, but should be a voluntary perk that they wish to and can afford to contribute to their employees.
This is not an issue that i believe the government should extent itself into.
If the government is allowed to make these types of decisions for businesses then wouldn't it be a logical step for them to next rule that a sick person is not allowed to enter into a public business? or any publec place for that matter.
Small businesses are strained enough by regulation and it is these types of bills that only weaken the desire for creation of business due to expense.
Allow the issue to be decided among the employer and their employees and leave government out of it.
If an employee chooses not to pay into their sick day fund then let them be responsible for they own actions, its not the government's job nor should it be.

Another way of looking at this is, does a sick person have the right to go out into public when they know they are sick?
How would they aquire medical attention? food? medicines?, etc
Should the government set up an agency to police this? create an agency to service in house clients on sick leave?
Who would pay for it?

My problem with making laws about this sort of thing is that they're often blanketed over areas where it isn't practical. Also, if the government dictates things like the number of sick days an employee must have, free market economics will start to slip out of the grasp of small and medium business owners.

However, I believe that when someone is sick, they should stay home. While I don't like how it looks, I respect Eastern folks who wear masks to work when they're not feeling 100%.

I can't find any statistics on this, but I assume that all unionized labor has negotiated sick days. So, even without a law, this gives 12.5% ref of U.S. workers sick days.

Next, a significant number of un-unionized positions in the U.S. require individual negotiation. Negotiating sick days in addition to vacation days is important. Since I can't find a reference on this, I'm going to guess that about 3% of the U.S. workforce negotiates their employment package.

Another large segment of the population is employed in the public sector. Things like government funded jobs, military, etc. Those folks presumably all have sick days.

So, very roughly about 70% of the U.S. workforce doesn't have sick days.

I think that this number is too high.

I must say I had an incident where I wish this bill had been passed. Early last year I got sick with the flu. Problem is, I had just come back from vacation and had, I think, only one day's worth of vacation time left. It was the flu. It lasted three weeks!!! For three weeks, I was practically bedridden, but couldn't stay home beacuse I didn't have any sick leave or vacation time left to use. I was dragging my butt to work every day, sleeping most of the day with my head on my desk. I truly believe I almost died during that three-week episode. Sadly, I don't know how many other people I infected because I couldn't stay home.

I think it would really help prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus if people were able to stay home.

I have to say YES to this one. Though it may seem like all businesses already offer paid sick leave, a large portion do not. For this reason, employees in these businesses go to work sick rather than lose money. Ok you say, that's their problem. Well if you consider that most of these non-paid sick pay jobs deal directly with the public, you may think otherwise.

Example, sick staff at a restaurant handle food and the plates your food goes on. They try hard to not pass the germs to you through frequent handwashing but... sneezes, sweat, etc happen.

Paid sick leave will encourage employees to stay home and get the rest they need. It will increase costs to the employers but personally it's cheaper than paying for sick customers or a closed business.