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Course Name

Instructor Name

Student Name

9th November 2020

“Title”

In an era where more and more organizations are evolving towards a lean management

setup, employee leaves can be a major inconvenience. Because of this, not all businesses are

keen on providing employees with sick leaves.

One reason that sick leaves should be a requirement is to ensure employee health is not

compromised. Without sick leaves employees experience a trade off between their health and

work. Employees dealing with financial issues might disregard their well being which can

aggravate their condition.

Another reason sick leaves should be a requirement is that it leads to a more productive

and healthier workplace environment. If employees infected with influenza or COVID keep

showing up to work, they act as carriers of disease. This creates a health risk for other employees

and if a significant portion of the workplace get infected, it compromises organization

productivity.

Employers should also be required to provide sick leaves for the sake of public welfare.

Offices can easily become hotspots for infections as employees are required to work in close

quarters for extended periods of time. When these employees then interact with people outside of

work, it causes diseases such as influenza to become rampant within the rest of the population. In
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fact, introducing sick leaves laws can help reduce seasonal flu infections by almost 5 percent

(Pichler, and Ziebarth).

Some employers argue that it should be at the behest of the organization to decide

whether sick leaves are merited. This is because benefits such as sick leaves are an integral

component of the job package provided to employees and making this a requirement would strip

businesses of the power to negotiate job terms. This argument is flawed as sick leaves should be

a universal right and transforming it into a bargaining chip is an outrageous practice.

For these aforementioned reasons I would personally always support candidates who vote

in favor of laws to enforce sick leaves.

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Works Cited

Pichler, Stefan, and Nicolas R. Ziebarth. "The Pros And Cons Of Sick Pay Schemes: Testing For

Contagious Presenteeism And Shirking Behavior". SSRN Electronic Journal,

2015. Elsevier BV, doi:10.2139/ssrn.2689852. Accessed 9 Nov 2020.