paid sick days
kkrisberg | September 23, 2016Despite all the concern about shuttered businesses, fired employees and lost profits, a new report has found that New York City’s paid sick leave law was pretty much a “non-event” for most employers.
Released this month, “No Big Deal: The Impact of New York City’s Paid Sick Law on Employers” reported that in the years following the 2014 implementation of the paid sick leave law, the great majority of businesses surveyed said the law had no effect on overall costs. The report, authored by researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Murphy Institute at the City University…
lborkowski | June 15, 2015Last week, Oregon's Senate and House passed a bill that requires businesses with 10 or more employees to let them earn up to 40 hours of paid sick time each year. Governor Kate Brown is expected to sign the bill, which would make her state the fourth in the nation mandating paid sick days. Connecticut was the first state to pass a paid-sick-days law, in 2011, and California's legislature followed in 2014. In Massachusetts, advocates introduced a ballot proposal on earned sick time, and the state's voters approved it in the 2014 election.
The original version of Oregon's bill would have…
lborkowski | February 18, 2015Last week, US Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) reintroduced the Healthy Families Act, which would allow workers in businesses with 15 or more employees to earn one hour of job-protected sick time for each 30 hours worked, up to 56 hours (seven 8-hour days) per year.
DeLauro has been introducing this bill in every Congress since 2004, and Murray has been an original co-sponsor since then. What's new this time around, though, is that the legislation has the president's explicit support. Last month, President Obama urged Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act…
lborkowski | October 28, 2014A new Data Note about Kaiser Family Foundation survey findings highlights how this country’s lack of nationwide paid sick leave places a disproportionate burden on women with children – and is particularly hard on low-income mothers. In Balancing on Shaky Ground: Women, Work and Family Health, Usha Ranji and Alina Salganicoff begin by noting that 70% of mothers with children under 18 are in the labor force. Then they report the results of survey questions on who takes charge of children’s healthcare and whether they have paid leave time to fulfill these responsibilities.
The 2013 Kaiser Women…
lborkowski | October 2, 2014Last month, when California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Health Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 into law, he made his state the second in the nation with a law mandating paid sick days. In 2011, Connecticut became the first state to require that employers let workers earn and use paid sick time – although, it only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees. California’s new law, which takes effect July 1, 2015, exempts some classes of workers but otherwise applies to all employers with at least one employee.
In November, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to add their…
lborkowski | February 13, 2014After having delivered prime-time telecasts from the Olympic Games since 1988, NBC’s Bob Costas had to step aside due to a pink eye infection. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff opined that Bob Costas did the right thing, noting, “People turning up to work sick is actually a vexing problem for employers that could, by some estimates, cost them as much as $150 billion a year.” Sick employees showing up to work can more easily spread their diseases to co-workers and customers, as well as fellow carpoolers or transit riders.
In Costsas’ case, his initial reluctance to stay home (or in his hotel room) to…
lborkowski | January 29, 2014In last night's State of the Union speech, President Obama addressed several ways to "make sure our economy honors the dignity of work, and hard work pays off for every single American." Here's what he said about wage increases:
To every mayor, governor, state legislator in America, I say, you don't have to wait for Congress to act; Americans will support you if you take this on. And as a chief executive, I intend to lead by example. Profitable corporations like Costco see higher wages as the smart way to boost productivity and reduce turnover. We should too. In the coming weeks I will issue…
lborkowski | November 6, 2013At the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in Boston this week, the organization officially approved 17 policy statements, including one calling for the US to improve access to paid sick and family leave and one urging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require workplace injury and illness prevention programs. Having APHA on the record supporting these improvements will bolster ongoing campaigns for paid leave and OSHA's efforts to advance an injury and illness prevention standard. (Check out more news from Boston at the APHA Annual Meeting blog.)…
lborkowski | October 29, 2013I spent much of yesterday at a hearing held by the District of Columbia City Council’s Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs – but I didn’t manage to stay for the entire 11 hours. Nearly 150 witnesses signed up to testify about the two main issues under consideration: raising the city’s minimum wage, and improving its paid-sick-leave law, which denies many workers access to paid sick days. The presence of so many witnesses, and the many hours they and Committee Chair Vincent Orange spent in the hearing room, demonstrate the importance of these issues that affect so many…