Governor Scott, Champion of Public Health, Bans Sick Pay

Nothing can improve your dining experience like having a sick waitstaff, except possibly knowing that the cook who prepared your food is also stricken with the flu. That also will improve your dining experience, because it will expose you to germs and build your resistance to them. Unless it gets you really sick, in which case, tough breaks but that is not Rick Scott's problem:  

Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill Friday that would block local governments from enacting mandatory paid-sick-time measures, such as the one pending in Orange County

The Republican governor sided with Walt Disney World, Darden Restaurants, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and a broad array of powerful business interests that argued the ban was needed to avoid a patchwork of local employment rules for companies.

Well THANK GOD someone is out there standing up for a broad array of powerful business interests -- you just don't see that sort of principled stand much these days. Florida would just be a craphole otherwise.

But wait! There is more! Just look what Scott saved Florida workers from: Not only would the vetoed bill have allowed paid one hour of paid sick time to hourly workers for every 37 hours worked, it would have allowed paid sick time to workers caring for a sick relative:

The proposal pushed in Orange would have -- were it approved -- required employers to provide paid time off to workers who are ill or caring for a sick family member.

Both full- and part-time employees would earn one hour of sick time for every 37 hours they work, to a maximum of 56 hours annually. Employers with fewer than 15 workers would not have to provide sick pay but could not penalize workers who took unpaid time off for being sick.

[...]

Proponents said it would improve workplace performance and drive down health costs. Opponents said it would hurt profits, drive off new business expansions into Florida and kill jobs.

Screw you, people with sick kids or elderly, infirm parents! Rick Scott wants to go to Disneyworld and eat at Olive Garden afterwards, so back to work. Seriously though, let us address the idea that paid sick leave hurts the economy and kills jobs. Here [pdf] is a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research demonstrating that there is no correlation and no causal relationship between paid sick leave and economic ruin. Here is a map of all the countries in the world, labeled according to which mandates paid sick leave and which don't. The U.S. is keeping company with libertarian paradises like Chad, Somalia, Liberia, and India; meanwhile the ENTIRE GLOBAL NORTH (including former USSR countries, China, and all of Europe) and most of Africa mandates paid sick leave. Maybe Rick Scott is just jealous of Scott Walker's impressive job noncreation record in Wisconsin?

But yeah, probably Rick Scott knows something we do not and has completed a rigorous analysis of all relevant data to justify his insistence that food service workers prepare and handle food while carrying potentially communicable diseases. Good work, Rick Scott! Florida thanks you!

 [Orlando Sentinel]