Paid Family Leave Good for Business and the Economy
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When workers have paid family leave, especially after childbirth, they’re more likely to stay in the workforce and significantly less likely to require public assistance, according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women & Families. In fact, they’re even more likely to receive salary increases.
That’s good for everybody, the authors say, including both taxpayers and businesses, which reap a more stable workforce when paid family leave is offered.
Today, nearly three-fourths of children live in homes where the adults who care for them work outside the home. Workers in jobs that have paid holidays and vacation time often cobble together those benefits in order to take care of a newborn or other family members. But low-wage workers whose employers don’t offer any paid leave, say the study’s authors, are at risk for falling out of the workforce and onto public assistance rolls when family members require their care.
The study, ”Pay Matters: The Positive Economic Impacts of Paid Family Leave for Families, Businesses and the Public,” conducted by the Center for Women and Work (CWW) at Rutgers University, reports that: Read the rest of this entry »
For a Healthy Denver, Vote ‘Yes’ on Initiative 300
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This is a cross-post from Working America.
Right now in Denver, Colo., there is both a jobs and a public health crisis.
Parents are sending their sick children to school. Working adults are unable to take time off and care for elderly parents. Small businesses and taxpayers are spending too much on emergency care. And in restaurants and coffee shops across the city, waitresses and cooks are preparing and serving food while sick.
This fall, the people of Denver have a chance to change all of this by voting ”Yes” on Initiative 300.
America’s ‘Go to Work Sick’ Culture Is Out of Balance
Mariya Strauss, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), sent us this report.
Today’s jobs—especially in the hotel and restaurant industries—”don’t fit today’s workforce,” said Joan Williams, president of the Center for Worklife Law at the University of California/Hastings. Restaurants and hotels typically employ low-wage workers with “just-in-time” personal schedules, meaning the workers’ reliance on family members for child care and their need to care for elders who need medications at certain times often clash with their employers’ habits of scheduling them differently from week to week and day to day.
Williams gave the keynote address yesterday at a symposium on the National Dialogue on Workplace Flexibility, a series sponsored by the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor. The series is designed to bring together employers and workers’ advocates such as unions to discuss how new workplace policies can help alleviate some of the burden on women and children of meeting both their jobs’ and families’ needs. The dialogue focused on addressing the work-life blance in the hotel and restaurant industries.
Reports Show Paid Sick Leave Helps Everybody
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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.
Work. Family. Conflict. Resolution?
The realities of our workplaces have not changed to meet the new realities of our economy and society, says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker. Employers and political leaders must create new policies that help working families deal with their basic needs of feeding their families, caring for their elderly parents, paying the mortgage.
Speaking this afternoon to a conference on the “Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict,” sponsored by the Center for American Progress, Holt Baker said, “Our families are trying to live in two different worlds at the same time—and it is just not working.”
Most people—men and women, across race and class—agree that the changing status of women is a good thing, now that we are half the workforce and have the opportunity and the weight of being breadwinners. But we also agree that something’s got to give.
The conflict between work and family is no longer between men and women, Holt Baker said. “It’s between families and the systems that are not meeting our needs.” Read the rest of this entry »
It’s a Small World: Disney and the H1N1 Virus
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For workers at Disney in Anaheim, Calif., getting sick—even with the H1N1 (swine flu) virus—means an awful choice: Stay home and risk being disciplined or go to work and spreading the illness to co-workers and the public.
Millions of hospitality industry workers in this country have no paid sick leave—like the more than 1,500 workers at Disney—and worse, actually could lose their jobs for staying home to get well. UNITEHERE! Local 11, which represents the workers at Disney, created this video, “It’s a Small World: Disney and the H1N1 Virus,” that clearly shows how Disney’s policy endangers workers and the public.
If you have information about cases of H1N1 among visitors or workers at Disney hotels or parks, send an e-mail with the story to disneyh1n1@gmail.com. And check out our resources on H1N1 here.
Join Tweet-a-Thon and Expose the Chamber of Commerce Friday
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Get set to join a tweet-a-thon Friday, at 10 a.m. EST, to help launch the #notmychamber campaign spearheaded by the worker advocacy group, American Rights at Work.
If you are on Twitter, starting at 10 a.m., sign the organization’s “Not My Chamber” act.ly petition at http://act.ly/1cc or by tweeting: RT @araw petition @chamberpost: The U.S. #Chamber doesn’t represent me. It’s Not My Chamber! http://act.ly/1cc #notmychamber (RT to sign!)
If you don’t use Twitter (and can understand nary a word of the previous paragraph), you can sign the “Not My Chamber” pledge here: www.notmychamber.org. Already, 20,301 people and 3,102 business owners have signed the pledge.
Report: Paid Sick Leave Doesn’t Hurt Economy
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As Congress begins considering legislation that would guarantee workers up to seven paid sick days per year, a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a nonpartisan think tank, finds that mandatory paid sick days do not lead to higher unemployment.
“Paid Sick Days Don’t Cause Unemployment” examines the connection between government-mandated paid sick days and the national rate of unemployment in 22 highly developed countries. Click here to read the report.
Says John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and co-author of the report:
Despite frequent claims to the contrary from some in the business community, we found no correlation between paid sick days and unemployment. Guaranteeing paid sick days does not put countries at a competitive disadvantage.
