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Tery Kendrick - May 02, 2008
Sick Days Legislation
Hello from Washington DC. I am doing some contract work for the National Partnership for Women and Families. It was one of the lead organizations in drafting and advocating for the Family Medical Leave Act.
It’s now one of the lead organizations in the effort to pass legislation to guarantee paid sick days as a right for workers. Washington DC recently became the second city in the nation to pass paid sick days legislation. I want to give you a little background on the issue, describe the classic political fight that ensued, and Terry’s personal moral to the story.
First the issue, almost half of the US workforce (48 percent) don’t have paid sick days – these are days to stay home when they themselves are sick or to take care of a sick family member – usually their kids. Over 75% of food-service and hotel workers—who come in frequent contact with the public—do not have a single paid sick day.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not that thrilled to know that someone is sneezing on my pasta or covering their mouth to cough and then using those hands to set out the tableware at a restaurant where I’m planning to treat myself to a nice meal.
These aren’t people who are mad at me because I’m an obnoxious customer or a poor tipper. They simply don’t have a choice to stay home – at the least, they lose pay if they don’t come to work and at the most, they risk losing their job.
There are no federal or state laws that require employers to guarantee paid sick days to working people. There is good legislation proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, which would guarantee workers up to seven paid days a year to recover from an illness, care for a sick family member or go to a health care appointment.
Because of the gridlock in Congress, advocates are taking this issue to the local and state level. Now for the political fight, In May of 2007 DC advocates started working to bring paid sick days legislation before the DC city council. Without going into all the machinations of the council suffice it to say that the bill was brought before a committee headed by the only Republican member on the Council, Carol Schwartz.
To her credit, she could have buried the bill but she wanted to pass the legislation. She wanted advocates and the business community to work together. Here’s where the wheels started to come off and the moral of the story starts to become apparent. The DC Chamber of Commerce hated, loathed, and despised the bill. If it passed all businesses in the District would immediately pick up and move to Maryland.
You know the drill, it’s the same arguments that are made when the efforts to raise the minimum wage are broached. I’m not saying that small business owners don’t need exemptions or that every business owner is a fat cat but come on.
Businesses need workers and they need consumers to buy their products. A healthy workforce would seem to benefit business and people who earn enough to buy products also benefits business.
Anyway, the Chamber had a long list of amendments to the paid sick days bill, many of which were passed. Employees must work at a business for a year in order to be eligible for sick days. If you or your child are sick in that first year – too bad.
There is an exemption for employees who have worked less than 1,000 hours for their employer. The bill exempts restaurant wait-staff and health care workers, again the people who are most likely to come in contact with the public and spread disease.
Estimates of how many employees will be exempted by the amendments run as high as one-third of the D.C. workforce. Another amendment that passed requires the mayor's office to develop administrative rules for exempting any "businesses that can prove hardship" as a result of the new sick-leave requirements.
There were also compromises to the number of sick days employees would receive. Businesses with 100 or more workers will provide seven days of leave, those with 25 to 99, five days, and those with 24 or fewer, three days. Part-time workers get pro-rated time.
So you’d think that with all the compromises and everybody giving up some ground, the Chamber would have supported the bill. No, they opposed it. After all the meetings and compromises and amendments, they opposed the final bill.
The DC legislation is still a good effort. But would it have been better if people had not tried to work together and to reach compromise, when at least one party was disingenuous?
Terry’s moral of the story is that this is a cautionary tale. Sometimes when the lamb lies down with the lion, the lion is the one who ends up better fed and the lamb picks up a bigger share of the tab.
As we move into health care reform, let us remember that no compromise will make the insurance companies happy. They’ll siphon off a ton of our energy getting us to acquiesce. When push comes to shove, they’ll use their money and influence to block the effort and in the end will we have what we wanted?
There is a saying that we should not sacrifice the good in order to hold out for the perfect, but I don’t want to sacrifice the good and end up with the below average. This is Terry Kendrick, thanks for listening
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| Northwest Area Foundation Grant Funds News Reports on Poverty Issues |
Over the next two years the Montana Public Radio News Department will be presenting regular feature stories about issues of poverty in Montana. This project is made possible with a two-year, $78,500 grant from the Northwest Area Foundation. The funding will enable Montana Public Radio to add a half-time reporter to its staff for the duration of the project, as well as cover costs for field recording equipment and travel throughout western and central Montana. News Director Sally Mauk says, “I’m excited about the project and the opportunity to get our news staff out to many Montana communities to report on such an important and timely topic.”
The Northwest Area Foundation approached Montana Public Radio with this opportunity for funding coverage of poverty issues, after beginning successful projects with Minnesota Public Radio and Seattle’s KUOW last year. The Northwest Area Foundation’s mission is to help communities in an eight-state region (including Montana) reduce poverty. www.nwaf.org.
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