Who Should Get Sick Days?

    One issue that is on the radar screen--I've been getting a slew of emails on the subject--is the fight to get Congress to give paid sick days for workers. One bill proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy--who will be the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the new Congress come January--would guarantee 7 total sick days for the 66 million people who do not have sick days.

    Putting aside the policy discussion for a moment, there are two points to make. First, when you have a union, you negotiate sick days and don't have to beg for them. Second, the issue of sick days really shows the gap between workers and their bosses and/or the rich. There was a quote by a Chamber of Commerce vice president for "labor, immigration and employee benefits" which made me sit up: "The employer community is not going to roll over on this issue."

    And I thought: right, people like this v.p., managers and other bosses never have to worry about sick days--or, for that matter, someone like me, who, in fact has had a naughty bug the last couple of days and, though I soldiered on, never had a doubt that if I wanted to I could just stay in bed with no penalty...other than guilt. If the elites and their managers are sick or have a sick child, they just call in and say "I can't come into the office today." You think they get docked pay? Or you think anyone keeps track of where they are? Nope. So, it's so easy for them to ignore what it means for the millions of people who grapple with their well-being.

Comments

[Kathleen Casavant]

Jonathan, thanks for this post. I, and many other women around the country, have been working toward paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, paid sick days and many other iterations of that subject for many years. And,while this is clearly not just a woman's issue, it has been looked at as such. It has been difficult to get any kind of paid leave policy prioritized as an important national public policy issue. It's great that Senator Kennedy is pushing this, but when you look at where the U.S. stands in terms of maternity leave, sick leave, etc. it is abysmal and we need much more to catch up with the rest of the world. I would suggest that your readers go to www.laborproject.org for a wealth of information from the Labor Project for Working Families.

[alphonso pines]

In the recent elections in san francisco the voters approved a new law that gurantees up to 5 sick days a year
if an employer has less than 10 employees, over 10 employees up to 9 sick days a year. also the minimum wage goes up to $9.20 per in Jan. we also have health care that restaurants are trying to block. Just some of the San francisco values that the replublicans talk about. Maybe these s.f. values aren't that bad after all