Public Supports Paid Sick Leave

by Mike Hall, Jun 22, 2010

Three-quarters of Americans say paid sick leave should be a “basic workers’ right” and Congress should pass legislation that guarantees workers paid sick leave, according to a new survey by the Public Welfare Foundation (PWF).

PWF President Deborah Leff says the overwhelming support for paid sick leave legislation shows

that a majority of people in every racial group and every income level, every age group, every part of the country, both political parties see paid sick days as a basic worker right.

But nearly half of all private-sector workers—and 76 percent of low-income workers—have no paid sick days and the survey found that one in six workers has lost a job for taking time off work to care for themselves or a sick family member. Says Leff:

People who don’t have paid sick days are very vulnerable. They go to work sick because they don’t have any choice. Either they will lose their jobs or they will lose their wages, so they show up sick.

Leff say lack of paid sick leave is harming public health and staining the health care system. The survey found that 55 percent of workers without any paid sick leave have gone to work with a contagious illness like the flu. Many of those workers, especially low-wage workers, have jobs that have direct contact with the public, such as the food service and hospitality industry, schools and health care.

Twenty-four percent of those surveyed said they have sent a sick child to school or day care and people without paid sick days are twice as likely as those with paid sick days to use hospital emergency rooms (20 percent vs. 10 percent) because they “were unable to take off from work to get medical care during normal job hours.”

Last year, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 2460 and S. 1152), which would require businesses with more than 15 employees to provide workers with up to seven paid sick days a year to care for themselves or a sick child or spouse.

Debra Ness, the president of the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), says the legislation, “would recognize what Americans already know—that paid sick days should be a basic labor standard” like the minimum wage and overtime pay.

No one should have to make the impossible choice between their job and their own health or the health of their loved ones. Now more than ever, workers need paid sick days.

Currently San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have paid sick day laws in place, and voters in Milwaukee passed a paid sick days bill that is being reviewed by state courts. Paid sick leave campaigns also are under way in more than two dozen states.

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