Time to own up: Paid sick days make sense

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

By Ellen Bravo

Imagine the scene: Someone tries to convince you there’s a wolf in the area about to cause great harm. The person offers to protect you – and then asks for generous handouts to help that effort.

Only problem: There’s no wolf.

Such is the case with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). Unable to defeat a ballot measure in 2008 in support of paid sick days, passed by nearly 70% of the electorate, MMAC took to the courts. The organization has tried to convince business owners that paid sick days would be a monster of a wolf, wreaking havoc on our fair city. And now it’s asking businesses to raise a boatload of money as well.

But this wolf, like the one in the fairy tale, turns out to be fake.

Read more from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel »

Restaurant workers say they work when ill

From the Seattle Times:

A cough. A sneeze. Perhaps a bead of sweat.

These are not ingredients that are supposed to come with a food order, but a national survey of restaurant workers released last week served up an unsavory possibility.

Two-thirds of 4,323 food servers and preparers surveyed admitted they had worked while sick in the past year.

The “Serving While Sick” report was commissioned by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a labor coalition for restaurant workers.

Research support was provided by the National Employment Law Project and the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. Funding was provided by the Public Welfare Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The report pinpoints two reasons the workers don’t stay home:

  • Nearly nine in every 10 said they lacked paid sick days;
  • More than six in every 10 said they had no health insurance.

The survey sponsors say those numbers heighten public-health risks if the nation’s 10 million restaurant-industry employees, working in more than 568,000 food and drink establishments, spread disease.

The National Restaurant Association, representing restaurateurs, took issue with the report. It presents a “distorted image of the restaurant industry and its employees while pushing ROC’s agenda,” said Scott DeFife, executive vice president for policy and government affairs.

DeFife said restaurants must adhere to local food-code regulations that require ill employees to stay home and must follow federal food-handling, safety and sanitation standards.

But the report detailed instances in which that didn’t occur.

Read more from the Seattle Times »

Sick Days for All Workers

Via The Retiree Advocate:

New coalition aims for a healthier Seattle through paid sick days for all workers

By Alex Stone

It should be as fundamental a standard as the minimum wage and the 40-hour work week. Yet one million Washington workers can’t take a single paid day off from work when they – or their children or their elderly parents – get sick.

Among them is Amber, a 22 year old Seattle-area mother with a 3 year old son. Amber’s current job as a kitchen staffer doesn’t offer her paid time off to care for her son when he gets sick. “When my son was sick, I had to call in sick because he couldn’t go to daycare,” Amber says. “I had to take two days off without pay and I regretted it because I have bills to pay and now I am behind”.

Amber’s story is commonplace in the food service industry, where just 16% of employers offer full-time workers paid sick days, and only 2% offer them to part-time employees. It’s no wonder nearly half of “stomach flu” related outbreaks are linked to ill food service workers.Continue reading “Sick Days for All Workers”