Small businesses push back on Whitmer’s expanded COVID-19 symptoms requiring mandatory leave time – Crain’s Detroit Business

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing pushback from small business groups over new coronavirus job protections for workers that dramatically expands the types of symptoms a worker could be experiencing to get a two-week leave of absence.

Whitmer's Executive Order 166, signed Friday, changed the definition of "principal symptoms of COVID-19" for employees to quarantine at home and not lose their jobs for doing so, though employees don't have to be paid while on leave.

The Democratic governor's previous worker protection Executive Order 36 from March limited the symptoms to a "fever, atypical cough or atypical shortness of breath."

Whitmer's new order expands job protection symptoms to include a "fever, sore throat, a new uncontrolled cough that causes difficulty breathing, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, new onset of a severe headache and new loss of taste or smell."

The order also instructs anyone who has been in close contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19 or "who displays one or more of the principal symptoms of COVID-19" to stay home for 14 days or until the individual tests negative for the novel coronavirus.

Whitmer's new order changed the definition of a "close contact" from "being within approximately six feet of an individual for a prolonged period of time" to "being within six feet of an individual for fifteen minutes," likely increasing the number of eligible workers who could stay home and quarantine without getting reprimanded at work.

Rob Fowler, CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan, called the governor's order "unworkable, unmanageable and unsustainable."

"This could be one of the worst executive orders from a small business perspective that we've seen," Fowler said Monday during SBAM's periodic Facebook video briefing for members.

David Rhoa, president of Marana Group, a 35-employee data and document-processing company in Kalamazoo, said Whitmer's new order treats all qualifying symptoms as a COVID-19 symptom, even if it may be related to some other illness.

"It has nothing to do with the fact that it could be allergies," Rhoa said on SBAM's online video briefing. "It could be if you have lactose intolerance and you've been drinking milk or eating ice cream or you have a food allergy of any kind or you had bad oysters, it doesn't matter, your diarrhea is a result of COVID-19."

Under the governor's order, the qualifying symptoms require an employee and their close contacts to quarantine at home for 14 days or until they test negative for the virus.

"The quarantine rules are essentially, I wake up in the morning, I have a headache, that's a COVID-19 symptom, I'm out for up to 14 days or until the individual who had the symptoms gets a negative COVID-19 test," Rhoa said. "It's really completely unmanageable for any small business I can think of."

Employer violations of Executive Order 166 could result in sanctions against a business license, according to the order.

In the order, Whitmer wrote that the new regulations are necessary "to reflect updated guidance from the Centers on Disease Control on the proper period of self-quarantine after a diagnosis of COVID-19 or the onset of symptoms associated with COVID-19, as well as to update the definition of the disease's primary symptoms."

SBAM's president, former Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, said he raised concerns Monday with Whitmer's office about the "downright impossible" management of sick time for illnesses that may not be the virus.

Charlie Owens, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said his group is "equally flummoxed" by Whitmer's new executive order.

"The description of the symptoms are fairly vague and include other possible maladies other than COVID," Owens told Crain's.

Employers have no way of knowing whether an employee is using a sore throat as an excuse to stay home, Owens said.

"And, frankly, it really doesn't even lie with the employer because if they were to try to assume some burden of proof, it could be construed as retaliatory," he said.

SBAM's Fowler and Calley said they were working on trying to get Whitmer's office to change the regulations, which were issued using the governor's emergency powers that are the subject of an ongoing legal and political battle in Lansing.

"Don't make any changes in your HR policy," Fowler said. "Lets let this one play out for a couple more days."

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Small businesses push back on Whitmer's expanded COVID-19 symptoms requiring mandatory leave time - Crain's Detroit Business