PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

Last week, the Post-Gazette reported that the city’s Office of Equal Protection would begin “Strict Enforcement” of a paid sick leave law, which requires that city businesses allow workers to accrue and use paid time off when they’re ill.

I was happy to see the update; the law is, to me, a no-brainer, an obvious need that too often falls through the legal cracks. No one should fear financial hardship because they become ill; no one should risk the health of others by forcing themselves to work sick.

After I read the story, however, I made the mistake of reading the comments.

A separate column — if not a book — could be devoted to the counter-productive futility of the comment section, a digital place of ire and inanity that has never once been a positive addition to the discourse. In this case, there was a smattering of, “As a business owner, this is bad news” — a perspective that is probably misguided, if still rooted in some legitimate concern — and, “Just another government handout,” a complaint so bereft of context and meaning that it’s not worth discussing.

The phrase that jumped out at me, though, was one of the most inane complaints of the post-pandemic era: “No one wants to work anymore.”

Most people do want to work as evidenced by a historically low 3.7% unemployment rate — the latest in a two-year stretch where at least 96% of the working population found a job. While the “no one wants to work” complaint is certainly incorrect, it also misses the point of a sick leave law.

None of us want sick people working.

Let’s set aside the idea that folks should not be financially impacted when they get sick (a surprisingly controversial statement, at least in this country). Let’s instead look at it from the perspective of the public. Why the hell would you want anyone, in any job, to be completing that job while ill?

The largest single sector of employment in the United States is retail salespersons. I, for one, would prefer that any cashier I encounter not be spreading a communicable disease. The next job on the list is home health and personal-care aides — an area where it is very important that the worker be hearty and healthy.

Let’s keep going. The vague “general and operations managers” doesn’t tell us a lot, but I assume it’s people who are in charge of other people; I don’t want them working sick. “Fast Food and Counter Workers” is fourth; again, anyone dealing with food should be free of known illness.

So again: Which workers, exactly, are we OK with sending to work while sick?

I suppose, to give a stupid comment more credit than it deserves, some in the “nobody wants to work” camp are of the opinion that paid sick leave will incentivize people to take sick time not only when they’re actually ill, but also just when they don’t feel like working.

Yeah — I don’t want those people working either.

There is, I think, a group of cynical folks whose general opinion of the world around them is that people are inherently trying to take advantage of others; that unless people are kept in line with draconian and harsh rules and regulations, society will immediately descend into chaos. It must be bleak living in such a mind — what a shame to be so mired in mistrust.

Fortunately, we can prove such people wrong. Because every competent study on the subject has found that companies with guaranteed, paid sick leave see increased productivity — in part because of lower rates of turnover, but also because when sick people come to work, they get other people sick and more work is missed.

It seems that paid sick-leave policies actually decrease unemployment, both due to decreased turnover and because such regulations give folks leave to get healthy — and thus stay in the workforce.

Who would’ve thought? Oh, right: Everyone who thought about it for more than a second. (That’s a category that frequently does not include the folks in the comment section.)

If we want to stay on top of a rapidly changing economy and evolving workforce, we need to keep an eye on factors such as this one, which makes workplaces strong, regardless of whatever 20th-century grousing may occur. The city’s policy is precisely correct; in fact, it may not go far enough.

No one should work sick — and no one wants the workers they encounter to be ill. That shouldn’t be controversial.