SEARCH
Reports Show Paid Sick Leave Helps Everybody
 |
Despite claims from business groups that paid sick leave for employees is bad for business, two new reports show everyone benefits from sick leave, including workers, the public and employers.
When workers cannot take off of work to recover from illness, or to care for a sick child or other relative, they are more likely to go into work when sick or to send a sick child to school. This represents a threat to public health due to the spread of contagious disease. A report released today by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC-United) bears that out. The ROC-United found that more than one-third of restaurant workers (38.1 percent) reported that a whopping 87.7 percent don’t receive paid sick days and, as a result, more than 63 percent of all restaurant workers reported cooking and serving food while sick, thus impacting consumers’ health. Check out the ROC-United report here.
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 survey by the Public Welfare Foundation (PWF). More than 160 countries provide paid sick leave, but not the United States.
A second report by the Drum Major Institute (DMI) looked at San Francisco’s first-in-the nation law requiring paid sick leave. Since the law was passed in 2007, both job growth and business growth in San Francisco have consistently been greater than in the five neighboring counties of the Bay Area, none of which have enacted paid sick leave. Business growth has been greater in San Francisco for small businesses as well as large businesses.
The report shows total employment in the five neighboring counties fell by 5.2 percent between December 2006, immediately before the paid sick leave law went into effect, and December 2009, compared with only 3 percent in San Francisco. Instead, San Francisco experienced stronger employment growth than the five counties from December 2006 to December 2008 in the industries that are most affected by paid sick leave: retail, leisure and hospitality, and accommodation and food services.C
San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are the only two cities with paid sick day laws in place, but paid sick leave campaigns also are under way in more than two dozen states.
You can download a copy of the DMI report here.
 |
Become a Fan on Facebook |  |
Follow Us on Twitter |  |
Subscribe to YouTube |  |
Subscribe to Blog RSS | ||||
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Paid Sick leave
I asked my boss for a day off, because my child was sick.
I said make it a sick day, vacation, or you can pick.
She said hire a nurse or get some one else to stay!
Come to work right now or you will get no pay!
I weighed the choice she gave me, it was oh so very clear,
My darling baby daughter needed her mother to be near.
So I stayed home after we went to see the Doc.
Loosing one days pay would only put me in hock.
To my surprise, on my return she was now going to write me up!
I was now to be on attendance control and better not screw up.
The next absence, a suspension and a couple of days without pay;
For taking care of my baby daughter this is just not fair I say.
Not any paid time off for the family that they cannot take away.
No vacation, Paid time off or any time; it is just not right I say.
No, No, says the Boss our sick leave is only just for you.
We won’t pay you and you can’t use your vacation too.
You better be here every day; we have work for you to do,
Or with our attendance control we’ll just get rid of you.
The ideal employee is one who is Single By Choice.
Company employees should sing in one single voice.
.
We did not hire your Family, not mom, dad, husband or wife.
No Family commitments! Now that’s for all your working life.
If you get sick or have a family don’t bother to apply.
You must be here each and every day until your fired or die!
There ought to be a law to stop policies like that!
I went to see the CONGRESS and to have a little chat!
Don’t look to congress, REPUBLICIANS WANT NO mandates,
Nor will you get any help from THEM IN THE legislatures in your states.
Working families, we need to lobby congress and the legislatures too.
We need a law so are jobs are protected when our children gets the flu.
Don’t loose heart we fought back and we did win at the ballot box.
We got a new sick leave law in San Francisco, the city that rocks.
We won in San Francisco you can win in your city too.
We can win in the states; but it will take work to win there too.
In the House and in the Senate the bills have been put in..
Stick together and fight for our families and together we will win.
By David G. Hurlburt, CWA Local 9410 Steward