Ellen Bravo writes in the MJS yesterday that forcing employers to provide mandatory sick days is a good idea.

The corporate lobbyists opposing the Milwaukee ordinance maintain that employers already provide time for workers when they or loved ones are sick. The few that don’t, they argue, will fail. As Tim Sheehy of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce put it, “No business can make it unless they take care of their people.”

And then there’s the real world.

Listen, I’m all for giving employees plenty of sick days.  In fact, I’d try to make it policy if Intrepid had any employees.  But to make it a law? Or an ordinance even?  Pshhh.

I like how Bravo talks about the “real world” like forcing employers to artificial standards is how the “real world” should work.  How about in the “real world,” employers offer sick days when it benefits them?  Remember how we used to have companies that could try to succeed in order to make money?  Of course, maybe that’s an outdated model in the U.S.

With Bravo’s way of talking about the “real world” in a way that doesn’t actually sound like the real world, you’d swear she was a…

I ask my students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Oh, snap!  A teacher!  A teacher!  It’s all making sense!

“How many of you have ever called in to work sick and been ordered to come in anyway?” Sometimes, every student in the room raises his or her hand; other times, four out of five do. They tell stories of working with flu, strep throat, even E. coli.

“Where do you work?” I ask. Their answers: handling our food, caring for our kids, ringing up our purchases. We can’t afford their germs; they can’t afford to lose their jobs.

It’s called production, and Americans could actually afford to be better at it rather than being so great at consumption.  I’m sure people in other producing countries are glad to take the work that we don’t do on our mandatory sick days.