PAID SICK DAYS: food handlers shouldn't have to work while contagious

[nashville_brook]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169036/women-paid-sick-days#

Women for Paid Sick Days
Katrina vanden Heuvel on July 24, 2012 - 12:42 PM ET

Some policy questions are difficult. Here are a few easy ones: Should people who handle food for a living have to work while contagious? Should sick kids be stuck at school because their parents are stuck at work? Should coming down with something cost you your job?

Most Americans say: No, no and no. Politicians are catching up with them, but not fast enough.

As I noted last winter, 2011 was the biggest year yet for paid sick leave, a common sense reform requiring employers to provide a minimum number of sick days, so low-wage workers can stay home sick without losing their pay or their jobs. After years of savvy, tenacious organizing, last year Seattle joined San Francisco and DC to become the nation’s third paid sick leave city, and Connecticut’s became the nation’s first statewide law (Milwaukee passed a bill in 2009 but Scott Walker has overridden it).

Paid sick leave is the kind of pro-family policy that we should be able to take for granted in a civilized democracy. By averting senseless firings, it reduces unemployment. By letting sick people stay home, it advances public health. In San Francisco, which in 2006 became the first city to mandate paid leave, even critics have changed their tune. In 2010, the executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which had decried the bill as a job killer, told Bloomberg Businessweek that it had turned out to be “the best public policy for the least cost. Do you want your server coughing over your food?”







more on the Paid Sick Days campaign (including tools and resources) here: http://paidsickdays.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=psd_index

[progressoid]

1. Rec.

[lib2DaBone]

2. Very desciptive graph. Today's job mnarket brought ot you by Washington, D.C.

unfortunately.. this is the way in today's job market. Companies are raking in millions... working employees to death. No overtime , no benefits.. slash wages. If you don't like it... thet tell you to quit.... becasue there are 10 other people waiting in line for a job.

The company I work for provides no sick time.. (no work- no pay)

I also have to take a week off for Jury Duty.. which I will not get paid for.

[nashville_brook]

6. absent leadership at the national level, we're having to address this at the state/city

level. It won't help by the time you have jury duty, but check the website to see if you're in an area where there's an active campaign. There's lots of ways to get involved.

[closeupready]

3. Of course, NOBODY should HAVE to work when sick; unfortunately,

for many, it's either work or re-use diapers/soup kitchen for dinner/put off paying ConEd, etc.

Republicons will just counter with, "yeah, but what if someone abuses sick pay? Can't have even one person out of thousands doing that, so no can do."

[nashville_brook]

5. one of the strengths of this campaign is the paid sick days are "earned"...

they're absolutely expecting apocalyptic pushback from local chambers, the NFIB, the National Restaurant Association, etc. They've got big bucks behind them...we've "only" got people.

[gopiscrap]

4. Everyone should have an automatic 6 comp days per year with out explaination

and up to 24 more days with doctors note paid.

[nashville_brook]

7. it's going to take some work, but i think we can turn the tide

on this. i'llbe writing more on it soon, as i've joined the effort in Orlando to get this passed.

[Matariki]

8. I've known restaurant workers who would be fired for calling in sick

much less hope to be paid for it. Terrible, stupid policy.

[nashville_brook]

9. that's what we're trying to change...with a protocol in place

there's less room for this. also need to raise awareness in terms of parental needs...to care for sick children.