Blog with Rob: Government mandated vacation?

As most of you know, the government has been very busy the last few years issuing new business regulations.  Mandating health insurance coverage.  Raising the minimum wage.  Now Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announced he’s introducing legislation that would give workers up to seven paid sick days as well as separate legislation that would give workers in companies of 15 employees or more 10 paid vacation days. Under his plan even part time employees would receive paid vacation time.

While the statistics that surround this discussion are interesting (Labor Department statistics show that while 87% of full-time civilian employees get paid vacation, only 34% of part-time workers get paid vacation. And only 39% of workers making less than $9 an hour get paid vacations, no matter how many hours they work.) I don’t know if this is something that a small company of 15 employees can afford. For some businesses, this can be cost prohibitive.  For others simply the task of scheduling 2 weeks of vacation for everyone in the office can be tedious and time consuming, especially when you have a small staff and need to ensure coverage for all your office functions.

Personally I’m a big advocate of a work- life balance and feel that happy, balanced employees work harder and are more loyal, but this is a big stressor for a 15 or 20 person company.  For those of you worried about how this legislation will impact your business, I personally think there’s very little chance of this passing in either Chamber however it’s just another item for you to keep an eye on.