Big Money Knocks Paid Sick Leave Off Florida Ballot

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/labor/big-money-knocks-paid-sick-leave-florida-ballot?akid=9470.277129.6FKVsy&rd=1&src=newsletter719169&t=15



Advocates cried foul last week after a judge’s ruling effectively prevented a paid sick leave measure from reaching the November ballot in Orange County, Florida. The ruling, issued after an emergency hearing Tuesday night, ends the latest round of legal wrangling over whether the county’s commissioners could delay on putting the petition-backed proposal up for a vote. It comes amid increasing conservative pushback against the spread of such measures across the United States.

Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), called the result “perhaps the purest example I can think of, particularly in recent history, where special interest money and special interest access was used to usurp the purest form of citizen direct democracy that there is.” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, and the business group Central Florida Partnership, did not respond to requests for comment.

As I’ve reported previously , last year saw new momentum behind local laws requiring employers to provide workers with some minimum number of paid sick days to care for themselves or their families. At this time in 2010, paid sick leave laws had been passed only in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee (the last of which was overridden by a statewide Wisconsin law last year). In 2011, measures passed at the state level in Connecticut and at the city level in Seattle. A referendum failed in Denver. Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor vetoed a broad paid sick leave bill but allowed one restricted to city contractors and subsidized companies to pass. In June of this year, Louisiana passed a law like Wisconsin’s, pre-emptively barring local leave mandates. Paid sick leave struggles are now afoot in at least five states.

[Viva_Daddy]

1. "It's MY money." "We OWN this Country." "Let them eat cake."