States push laws to require paid sick days

[Omaha Steve]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20080820/D92LU4M80.html

Aug 20, 5:18 AM (ET)

By STEPHEN SINGER

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - For school bus driver Jamille Aine, a cold is more than an inconvenience. His employer does not offer paid sick days, so if he can't shake the bug, he may not be able to pay his bills.

Some 46 million U.S. workers lack paid sick days, but lawmakers in 12 states - including California, Connecticut, Minnesota and West Virginia - have proposed legislation in the past year that would require businesses to provide them.

Dale Butland of Ohioans for Healthy Families, an advocacy group pushing a November ballot initiative that would require employers to offer paid sick days, said the effort picked up steam in Columbus and other state capitals because federal legislation has stalled.

"This is the next frontier in assuring workplaces are safe," said Kate Kahan, director of the work and family program at the Washington-based National Partnership for Women & Families, which lobbies on paid sick leave and other workplace and health care issues.

Businesses - especially small companies - argue that forcing them to offer paid sick days hinders their ability to provide a flexible array of benefits, such as a mix of vacation and personal days that also may be used by employees when they are sick. And they say it's a costly new mandate for businesses already struggling through a contracting economy.

Nearly all large companies already offer paid sick leave to at least some of their workers, but state and federal mandates could require them to expand the benefit.

Kahan and other workers' advocates believe paid sick time should be an employment standard, like the federal minimum wage.

Advocates say the benefit is particularly needed for employees who handle food or work with children.

FULL story at link.

[Sherman A1]

1. Good News Indeed.

I hope this makes it past the various state legislatures. Even getting them proposed is a step forward. Even under a Union Contract, we had to give up our 4 days a year, when "times were tough for the company" in the 1980's and we took pay cuts, gave up vacation, personal holidays just to make our dear employer able to make ends meet ( or rather poor mouthing us and laughing all the way to the bank)...

It took years in order to just get 2 of them back.



Thanks!:toast:


I am going to forward the link to a person I know that writes freelance for our local labor newspaper. Maybe we can all push this idea forward a bit more and get the list of states increased at the minimum.