A nationwide survey released on Jan. 21 by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) details how President Obama's paid leave mandate will hurt small business more than it would help.
First off, small businesses are not as evil as the president would have you believe when it comes to paid leave, according to the survey:
Seventy-three percent of all small firms offered paid time off to their full-time workers. Among them, 67 percent offer two weeks or more.
Ninety percent of small firms that offer paid sick leave allow workers to use personal sick days to take care of a child or relative. Only 27 percent require a doctor’s note. Roughly eight percent have a formal policy regarding employees who request time off for a serious illness in the family. Eighty-six percent handle such requests on a case-by-case basis.
“What we found is that small employers aren’t as regimented in their leave policies as larger firms,” said Holly Wade, NFIB’s Director of Research. “They know their employees on a more personal level so there’s a lot less formality.”
Wade also asserted that mandating paid leave could have adverse effects on small business.
It’ll require a lot more record keeping, which they’re not doing now, and it will place restrictions on paid time off that don’t exist now in many cases. If you can only give your workers 10 days of paid time off and the government mandates five days of paid sick leave, then your employees have only five days left for vacation.
Another point that the survey and Wade bring up is the topic of overtime pay. Employers and workers might not like what the survey indicates.
An astounding 44 percent of small business employers will have employees who would be eligible for overtime pay should the mandate stick. This would result in a 50 percent increase in hourly pay over 40 hours.
“In many cases they’ll have to reclassify salaried positions into hourly positions and that might not be optimal either for the business or the employees,” Wade asserted.
Any way you slice it, small businesses are under attack, and the divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” will only increase with time.