Paid Sick Days gets Ink
Working Families gets an editorial into the Advocate on the subject of Paid Sick Days.
I don’t have a lot to add, except that this is one area where the absence of Jim Amann is most noticeable: the bill passed the State Senate twice, only to be crushed by Speaker Amann at the last minute each time.
Reading down the list of coalition supporters of the bill, ConnSACS (Sexual Assault Crisis Center) jumped out at me as a unique partner – it turns out that in the 2008 and 2009 versions, allowing victims of sexual assault and stalking the ability to use paid sick leave to get medical or psychological services, to relocate, or to participate in court proceedings.
One less positive change from the 2007 version was a revision of those workplaces impacted by the law, changing from those with 15 or more employees in the 2007 version to 50 or more employees in 2008. That cuts most of the non-chain restaurants and retail operations out of the law, and one State Rep that I asked said that the provision made it easy for them to support, “since it wouldn’t impact any businesses in town that don’t already have” paid sick days.
You have to start someplace, I suppose – but it’s a shame that a compromise that failed to win over the conservative Dems last year has become the high-water mark for what we can achieve at all this year.