sick leave
kkrisberg | June 14, 2017At the Guardian, Krithika Varagur interviewed workers inside the Indonesian factory that manufactures clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, finding poverty wages, anti-union intimidation and unreasonably high production targets. The story includes interviews with more than a dozen workers, who asked that details about their identities be changed to avoid being fired. Varagur writes:
Alia is nothing if not industrious. She has worked in factories on and off since leaving her provincial high school, through the birth of two children, leading up to her current job making clothes for brands…
kkrisberg | July 15, 2016In a new national survey, about one in every four U.S. workers rates their workplace as just “fair” or “poor” in providing a healthy working environment. And employees in low-paying jobs typically report worse working conditions than those in higher-paying jobs — in fact, nearly half of workers in low-paying jobs say they face “potentially dangerous” conditions on the job.
Released earlier this month, results from the new Workplace and Health survey are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of more than 1,600 adult workers who were interviewed via phone during the first…
kkrisberg | March 29, 2016At Slate, Michelle Chen writes about the experiences of hotel housekeepers in Miami during spring break. The story starts with Adelle Sile, a housekeeper at the four-star Fontainebleau Miami Beach:
Around this time of year, thanks to the influx of spring break and Easter break vacationers, the time (Sile) has to clean each room during her eight-hour shift gets squeezed as guests stretch their mornings to the final minutes before checkout. When she does finally get in, she sometimes opens the door to find vomit, empty bottles, crack pipes, marijuana buds, and makeshift mattresses of cushions…
kkrisberg | March 8, 2016It seems obvious that workers with paid sick leave are more likely to stay home and seek out medical care when they or a family member is ill. But it’s always good to confirm a hunch with some solid data.
In this month’s issue of Health Affairs, researchers used data from the National Health Interview Survey to provide some clarity on the relationship between paid sick leave and health-related behaviors. They found that workers without paid sick leave were three times more likely to forgo medical care than workers who do get paid sick leave. Also, during 2013, both full- and part-time workers…
cmonforton | February 5, 2016Consumers beware! A survey of 500 poultry-processing workers in Arkansas found that 62 percent said they have gone to work when they were sick. Why? Only 9 percent of the workers reported they had access to earned sick leave.
Have the flu? No problem. Come to work anyway and cut those chicken tenders.
Suffering from diarrhea? No worries. Come to work anyway and skin those chicken breasts.
The survey results, based on a representative sample of poultry workers in Arkansas, come from a report released today by the Northwest Arkansas Workers' Justice Center (NAWJC). The study, "Wage and Working…
kkrisberg | July 8, 2015A key argument in the movement to expand sick leave to all workers is that such policies help curb the spread of contagious diseases. And there are few workplaces where that concept is more important than in health care settings, where common diseases can be especially dangerous for patients with compromised immune systems. However, a new study finds that despite such risks, doctors and nurses still feel pressured to report to work while sick.
Published earlier this week in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on anonymous surveys conducted in a large children’s hospital in Philadelphia and…
lborkowski | January 20, 2015In the week before his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama took modest but important steps toward expanding US workers’ access to paid sick and family leave. Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, broke the news with a blog post on LinkedIn, where she explained the importance of paid leave:
Anyone who has ever faced the challenge of raising or supporting a family, while holding down a job, has faced tough choices along the way, and likely felt stretched between the financial and personal needs of their family.…
lborkowski | September 27, 2012Last week, warehouse workers from California's Inland Empire concluded a six-day, 50-mile march from Ontario, CA to Los Angeles with a rally at the LA City Hall. The workers are employed by NFI and Warestaff, which are contractors for Walmart. The Huffington Post's Kathleen Miles reports:
"The march, walking in the heat, was very easy compared to working in the warehouse," Raymond Castillo, a 23-year-old warehouse worker who marched with the group, told The Huffington Post.
Castillo is one of about 30 warehouse workers who walked out of the large warehousewhere they were employed in Mira…
lborkowski | August 16, 2011I somehow missed this when it first happened, but the state of Connecticut made history last month when Governor Dan Malloy signed legislation requiring up to five paid sick days per year for service workers at businesses with 50 or more employees. Christopher Keating gave these details in the Hartford Courant after the state's House of Representative passed the measure:
Manufacturing firms and nationally chartered nonprofit organizations like the YMCA would be exempt, and the bill also would not cover day laborers, independent contractors, salaried workers, and temporary workers.
Unlike in…
lborkowski | January 11, 2011According to new research from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, in 2010 44 million private-sector US employees, or 42% of the workforce, lacked access to paid sick time. This IWPR analysis distinguishes between employees who are eligible for paid sick time vs. those who can actually access it, because employers often don't allow for the use of paid sick time by employees in their first months on the job. IWPR reports that new employees have to wait an average of 3.5 months to access paid sick days.
The occupational categories with the lowest percentages of private-sector employees…
jstemwedel | July 6, 2010I saw a story in the San Jose Mercury News that I thought raised an interesting question about sick leave, one worth discussing here.
As it turns out, all the details of the specific case reported in the article sort of obscure the general question that it initially raised for me. But since I'm still interested in discussing the more general problem, here's a poll to tweak your intuitions.
In cash-strapped community college system, an administrator collecting paid sick leave is ...online survey
The question that the headline and first two paragraphs of the article raised for me was about…