Senate Bill 1817

From both medical and moral perspectives, Senate Bill 1817 mandating a 10-day paid leave for workers afflicted with mental illness is a laudable humanitarian gesture by the bill’s author. Some countries such as the USA, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and others have enacted laws providing paid leaves to workers facing mental health challenges.

The bill is filled with compassion and concern for the workers but overlooks the reality of our existing excessive legal annual paid leaves and holidays for maternity (105 days), gynecological surgery (60), violence against women (10), paternity (7), solo parent (7), vacation (5), sick (5), service incentive (5), voting (1), regular holidays (14), special holidays (8), and unscheduled leaves during natural calamities and special events, and work slowdowns during the Christmas season.

There are 229 legal paid leaves and national holidays which, if taken together with an almost equivalent number of local holidays, is a crippling reality that directly impacts business operations and profitability.

Furthermore, there are many pending bills in the legislative pipeline proposing nearly 200 additional paid non-working days. Should these be enacted into law, they could critically undermine the viability of many businesses, particularly SMSEs.

With the known underground industry for dubious certificates in Recto and Raon and the propensity to fake birth certificates and citizenship documents unearthed during the Quadcomm hearings, it will be nearly impossible to distinguish the real from the imagined mental illness and this would create opportunities for abuse in the workplace.

In the multinational company I worked for many years ago, there were two recorded cases of two employees who wanted to resign to start their own business and were able to secure a handsome medical termination pay by faking their illness.

One involved a salesman who claimed to be suffering from extreme job-related stress as he faked continuous laughter during office hours. He was able to obtain a medical certificate from company doctors who certified that he was prone to insanity. He was medically terminated.

The second employee after lunch breaks went up and down the office stairs from the ground to the sixth floors daily for one month then went to the office clinic to have his elevated BP measured. He was given a medical discharge for serious hypertension.

Under our company policy, any employee medically terminated was entitled to receive a month’s salary for every year of service, tax free. Resignation entitled one to only a full month’s pay subject to tax.

Both received their tax-free separation pay wearing wide smiles on their way to the bank. Mental sickness is a condition that is easy to fake as in the first aforecited example and could invite abuse.

While Senate Bill 1817 nobly recognizes the importance of mental health in the workplace, it could harmfully impact businesses. Legislators need to explore alternative approaches to achieve a balance between employee welfare and business sustainability.

These can take the form of enhancing access to mental health resources and incentivizing wellness programs such as mental health awareness and stress management, and ensuring that leave benefits are optimized by addressing mental health-related concerns, instead of mandating a separate 10-day paid leave.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a system that will foster a healthier workforce without adding an undue financial burden on employers and ensure that compassion is paired with practicality, benefiting both workers and businesses alike.