Fox hosts Martha MacCallum and Stuart Varney can afford unpaid sick days, so why should they concern themselves with those who can’t?
President Obama’s call for one week of paid sick for all workers leave almost certainly had something to do with MacCallum’s and Varney’s scorn for one week of paid sick leave for all workers.
MacCallum said, “What happened to if you’re really sick, and you really can’t come to work, you don’t come to work, and then if you’re not really sick then you don’t get any sick days? You just thank your lucky stars that you’re not really sick and you show up at work? How about that idea?”
Varney pooh-poohed it. “Martha, Martha, Martha, this has got nothing to do with ethics, this is all about politics. The President is lining up all these giveaways which he knows will not get through Congress. He knows the Republicans will say no. …He knows that will make them look bad. He looks good, he wins politically.”
MacCallum said sarcastically, “Because those big bad Republicans who don’t want to give anything to anybody for free, will say no to all this.”
”Don’t you want paid sick leave?” Varney asked mockingly. “And those people who won’t give it to you are bad. Didn’t you know that?”
MacCallum said she’d rather see workers get more vacation time than call it “paid sick leave.”
”Well you better get elected to Congress,” Varney teased.
”I think I have to work on that,” MacCallum joked.
The two had a good chuckle at the whole thing.
But while these two one percenters were sneering at the idea of making it affordable for others to take sick days, they couldn’t even be bothered to present the economic aspects – probably because they fall on the side of President Obama’s proposal.
From Media Matters:
But Fox’s dismissal ignores the fact that paid sick days have been shown to save the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, “Paid sick days help to decrease the productivity lost when employees work sick... which is estimated to cost our national economy $160 billion annually.” Paid sick leave also contributes to workplace stability by removing the cost of replacing workers and the risk of infecting other workers.
Additionally, The Center for Economic Policy Research found that Connecticut’s paid sick leave law had a negligible financial impact on the businesses that had to change their policies to comply with the law. Furthermore, these businesses reported minimal abuse of sick leave policies and a host of benefits.
Watch it below, via Media Matters, from the January 15 America's Newsroom.