Sick Leave

For maybe five times in the last 15 years, Manuela Mendez has had to drag herself to work at a fast-food restaurant in La Mirada, coughing and congested. "I go to work because we need the money," she said in Spanish. "It's difficult to work. I carry microbes that contaminate my work mates, and that's a problem for the customers."

Here's a look at protections workers have for paid sick time and proposals for change. Currently, California workers are entitled to partial pay for a long absence but may lack full pay for short absences. Proposed California law (AB 2716, Healthy Families, Healthy Workplaces Act): Employees -- full- and part-time as well as public and private employees -- would earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked.

A state bill to guarantee paid days off for sick workers died Thursday amid opposition from business lobbyists and lawmaker concern that the benefit was too costly. The bill would have granted employees of small companies in California up to five days of paid sick leave each year. Workers at larger firms could take up to nine days a year.

John Maddox says he knows how to motivate his 150 employees. Paid sick leave is one of the perks he offers to the 13 managers who run his six franchised Modesto-area pizza restaurants -- rewarding them for proving themselves responsible and ambitious. But if legislation now before Congress passes, Maddox will have to extend the benefit to nearly all of his workers at Mountain Mike's Pizza -- some of whom, he says, miss work too often.

Most U.S. workers don't use up all their sick days. Merrill Lynch & Co. seems bent on making sure its workers don't. A new corporate policy has employees at the largest U.S. stock brokerage possibly facing punitive action -- including the loss of pay -- if they take more than three sick days without valid excuses. Termination could result after eight sick days.

Mental disorders account for about a third of sick days, roughly equal to those caused by back and neck pain, according to the most comprehensive report yet on the effect of illness on disability. The survey tallied chronic conditions but not transient illnesses like the flu. Adult Americans with depression, anxiety or other psychological disorders annually miss 1.3 billion days of work, school or other daily activity, according to the report today in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

A former winner on "Survivor" has been suspended 20 days from his job with the Ohio Department of Transportation after an investigation concluded he took an unauthorized leave of absence. State investigators said Chris Daugherty of South Vienna, Ohio, used a bogus medical excuse to leave work for a month last fall to attend a promotional tour for the CBS reality TV show in Europe.

Cementing its reputation as a progressive haven and further irking business groups, San Francisco has become the first city in the country to mandate paid sick leave for all employees. The ballot measure, which hardly generated discussion here and passed with a resounding 61% of the vote, comes at a time when businesses are reeling from a city plan that requires employers to contribute to universal healthcare and a citywide minimum wage boost phased in over the last few years.

Glynndana Shevlin awoke Oct. 30 with a runny nose and scratchy throat, worried she might have the flu. But the full-time food and beverage concierge at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim has no paid sick days, and if her absences stack up, she faces discipline. So like many others in the service industry, Shevlin, 49, weighed her options and reported to work sick. "I thought I could make it," said Shevlin, who has worked at the hotel for 21 years. Four hours into her shift -- and after several trips to the bathroom to retch -- Shevlin asked to leave early.

When a miserable cold struck Kim Colabella in early December, duty called. Her supervisor and several colleagues were out of the office, and Colabella determined that, ailing or not, she needed to keep things going. So she took a cold pill, packed up her tissues and soldiered on to work. But when Colabella arrived at Corporate Wellness Inc., a Mt. Kisco, N.Y., firm that coordinates employee health services for other companies, her sniffling, red-eyed arrival won her a decidedly chilly reception.