Paid Sick Days Good for Business, Employees

From the Hartford Courant:

By Louis Lista

Earlier this year, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy addressed the Connecticut Business and Industry Association and voiced his support for legislation requiring large businesses in Connecticut to provide employees with a few paid sick days a year. The CBIA, the state’s main business lobby, was up in arms. To hear them tell it, granting a few paid sick days a year is just too expensive for Connecticut’s employers.

As a successful business owner and CBIA member, that’s not how I see it. In my experience, providing a few paid sick days is smart business — not to mention vital to the health and economic well-being of my employees.

I opened the Pond House Cafe in Elizabeth Park in 1999. Particularly in the restaurant industry, the need for paid sick days should be obvious. In these difficult times, restaurant workers are barely scraping by. Few of us — especially food service workers — can afford to lose a day’s pay.

I provide paid sick days because I have an obligation not just to my dedicated employees but also to my customers. It would be unhealthy, not to mention bad business, to have sick workers preparing and serving food.

Continue reading “Paid Sick Days Good for Business, Employees”

Crucial deadline ahead for Family Care Act enforcement bills — please call your legislators today!

mother and sick childIn just four days, the Family Care Act enforcement bills now under consideration in Olympia must pass out of the House or Senate. We need your help to make it happen.

Since 2002, Washington’s Family Care Act (FCA) has helped ensure workers can use the paid time off they’ve earned to care for a sick family member. For the most part, it’s worked well — but state agencies don’t have the authority to stop employers from retaliating against workers who use the FCA.

Lawmakers are considering companion bills to provide modest FCA enforcement — but with so many bills vying for their attention, they need a nudge from you.

It’s easy: just call the state legislative hotline at 1-800-562-6000 and say you’d like to leave a message for your state Representatives and state Senator. (Alternatively, you can look up your legislators here and send each of them an email.)

Your own message will be most effective, but here are a few points to get you started:

  • For most employees and employers in the state, the Family Care Act has been working well. Unfortunately, in some cases follow up and enforcement is necessary.
  • When people can care for their families, we all benefit from reduced health care costs, and employers benefit from better productivity and higher morale.
  • Children and adults get better more quickly when a family member is present. Follow up care improves when family members are able to hear doctor’s instructions.

With your help, we can get a Family Care Act enforcement bill on the Governor’s desk this year – thank you for your support!

Sticking it to the mom: United States now just one of the few with no paid leave for new moms

From CBS News:

Americans often take pride in ways their nation differs from others. But one distinction — lack of a nationwide policy of paid maternity leave — is cited in a new report as an embarrassment that could be redressed at low cost and without harm to employers.

“Despite its enthusiasm about ‘family values,’ the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families,” said Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this.”

Human Rights Watch, based in New York, focuses most of its investigations on abuses abroad. But on Wednesday, with release of a report by Walsh on work/family policies in the U.S., it takes the relatively unusual step of critiquing a phenomenon affecting tens of millions of Americans.

The social and economic benefits of paid family leave have long been apparent to the rest of the world. In fact, today the U.S. one of just a handful of nations (among them, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea) that don’t ensure some form of paid leave for new moms.

Read more from CBS News: Report decries lack of paid parental leave in U.S. »