Promising Momentum Points to Paid Sick Leave Spreading Widely

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http://www.alternet.org/labor/promising-momentum-points-paid-sick-leave-spreading-widely



For 38,000 private sector workers in Newark, mid-December brought good news and bad. The City Council of New Jersey’s most populous city delayed its vote on a paid sick leave bill until January 8 , so no early Christmas present for workers. But the bill they will be voting on after the new year, and by all accounts are likely to pass, will be the strongest sick leave bill in the nation, and will set the bar that much higher for other municipalities and states to come.

The sick leave debate in Newark came at the end of a watershed year for workers and their advocates. Fast food workers went on multiple strikes, drawing more attention to their low-wage plight. Mega corporations Walmart and McDonalds came under pressure and were exposed for not just exploiting their workers, but ultimately costing taxpayers who must subsidize underpaid full-timers. Raising minimum wage came front and center in the national conversation, with Democrats proclaiming it their number-one priority in 2014. And the number of cities requiring private businesses to give their workers some sick pay doubled, including Jersey City, New Jersey’s second biggest city in September, and New York City, despite its billionaire mayor’s veto last summer.

Newly sworn in Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to make inequality his top priority, and says his choice for the city's top attorney, Zachary Carter, will help the city extend paid sick leave protections to "more people, more quickly." In 2013, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC, the tiny town of SeaTac, Washington and the state of Connecticut all passed sick leave legislation. Massachusetts, Oregon and Vermont are poised to pass paid sick day bills, as is the city of Tacoma, WA.

"The tide has changed on paid sick days,” said Jon Green, national deputy director of the Working Families Party. “People look at a waiter or childcare provider or retail worker and they just know that forcing those people to go to work sick isn't healthy and it isn't right. Public support for paid sick days is extraordinary, and elected officials who don't realize it risk paying a steep price."