Is Obama Stupid or Just Completely Political?

So it is probably no secret -- he certainly didn't want it to be one -- that Barack Obama put out an Executive Order that is supposed to provide paid sick leave for some 300,000 employees of contractors to the Federal government.  And he did it on Labor Day.  Oh, goody.  The union thugs must be grinning behind their brass knuckles.

I can't tell you how many columns I've written the past year about this topic.  Whether explaining what companies would do if a silly proposal like this were passed, or just explaining the unintended consequences of pretty much anything, I've tried to point out that actions like this, pure political actions with no real concern for actually accomplishing anything, can be pernicious at worst, and neutral at best.

If we're lucky, this one will be no worse than neutral.  But the more I think about it, the more I think it might tilt toward the pernicious side -- and here's why.

The Executive Order mandates that employers grant an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours of actual work.  Obama hilariously pointed out that it could be used for a few things not exactly related to actual illness, but that's not the point.  The point, friends, is to look at what will be different.

A typical government contractor would have phased out specific sick leave a long time ago, but not to discourage use of sick leave.  In the old days, you got maybe two weeks of "vacation" and a week of "sick" leave.  When you took sick leave, it had to be because you were actually, you know, "sick."  And the employer had to keep records of that sort of thing, back when personnel departments were called "Personnel" and not "Human Resources", and were more austere and far less pompous.

To make things easier and more flexible, companies, particularly in the Federal contracting world, simply lumped it all into something called "paid leave", which you could use for anything, including vacations, illness and watching the World Series highlights on DVD.  As an employee, you only had to tell your employer you were taking time, and then you got permission and took it.

From the employer perspective, the oppressive rules of Federal cost accounting are a bit more easily handled by simply calling all leave "paid leave" or "paid time off" (PTO), which means one account to manage on the books, not two.  Win for employees (flexibility), win for employers (simplicity).

Then along comes Barack Obama, struggling to jam his precious "legacy" down our throats regardless of the value of the proposal, knowing a slavish press would sing hosannas to him, and would not think about things like unintended consequences.  "Thou shalt give sick leave", quoth His Majesty.

OK, so I'm a typical Federal contractor subject to this dictate from on high.  Here's what I will do.  I will shrug my shoulders, bow three times to the White House, and restructure my leave policy -- to strip the number of shiny new "sick days" that I'm giving out, away from existing paid time off, so my costs do not go up.

The employee gets the same number of leave days he or she had before the Executive Order, except some of them can no longer be used for vacation.  If the employee wants to take a longer vacation, he or she has to lie to the boss and risk being hauled up before "Human Resources" for improper use of sick leave -- that a week ago was simply usable vacation hours.  Oh yeah, that's a lot better.

So we have to ask ourselves -- look, I certainly know how contractors are going to respond, and I'm just a dumb old consultant.  Shouldn't the President of the United States have had even one person around him, astute enough to be able to tell him what the response will be, and whisper, "uh, Barry, this isn't going to accomplish anything."

I think as the Valerie Jarrett column I referenced above points out, it probably isn't because Obama is too stupid to see the point -- he's a socialist ideologue, not an idiot.  It's because his presidency, like his life, is about show, not substance; about politics, not about actually helping anyone.  Unintended consequences are of no moment to Barack Obama. 

Outcomes pale before optics.

How sad for the nation.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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