Boosting the middle class

From an editorial from the Everett Herald:

everett-herald
From the Everett Herald

To gauge the prudence and efficacy of public policy, the essential question is, “qui bono?” (Who benefits?) The question isn’t nuanced. Dress it up, spin it, recast a bill’s snooze-inducing language through a lobbyist’s lens. Facts are simply that.

The selling point for Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FMLI), a safety net and institutional necessity in uncertain times, is its affordability. With only 8 percent of businesses offering paid-family leave in Washington, options are limited, especially for middle-class households. State and federal law allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, recover from a serious illness, or help a dying family member. For workers with mortgages, school debt and other expenses, unpaid leave is financially devastating.

The economic squeeze is compounded by small businesses with 50 or fewer employees, which don’t need to provide unpaid leave. Many poor and part-time workers, in fact, have zero paid days off.

Marilyn Watkins, policy director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, underlined the social-justice component. “It should never be a matter of luck whether a parent can afford to spend the first precious weeks and months of life with their newborn child, or whether someone can recover from surgery before dragging themselves back to work,” Watkins said.

The value of a new Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FMLI) plan for Washington is that it’s (mostly) self-financing and won’t burden small businesses, the engine of the Northwest’s recovery. The plan augments the family-leave program established in 2007, providing up to 12 weeks to care for a new child or gravely ill family member, as well as 12 weeks for a worker’s own serious health condition.

Start-up costs are a little over $8 million per year for the first 2 years, or $17 million for the biennium. This amount would be recovered, since payroll premiums would begin in July 2014 (read: this would not be a charge on the general fund.) Total costs would be 0.2 percent of wages split between employers and employees. For someone earning $50,000, that translates into a weekly premium of 96 cents. FMLI’s Snohomish County proponents include HB 1457’s co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Sells, and SB 5292 co-sponsors Sens. Paull Shin and Nick Harper. It merits support.

“We talk about building the middle class. This bill goes right to the heart of the middle class,” Herald columnist John Burbank wrote earlier this month. “With this legislation, we enable children to get a strong start in life, cared for by their working parents. We enable parents to focus on their new children, without worrying about losing their jobs.”

Evelin’s story about the importance of Family and Medical Leave Insurance

evelin and fmaily
Evelin with her husband and kids

Evelin testified in front of the Senate Labor Committee about why Family and Medical Leave Insurance is so important:

My dad has been sick since October. My sister and I kept urging him to go to the doctor, but he didn’t want to miss work and pay a lot of doctor’s bills. It finally got so bad that we took him to the emergency room.

The doctor said he had urine backing up into his kidneys, and if he didn’t have the problem taken care of, he would end up on dialysis.

He needs surgery, but he would need to be off work for 6 weeks to recover, and doesn’t have that much sick leave and vacation saved up. He’s worried about how he’ll pay his bills and the extra medical costs, and he’s afraid if he misses too much work, he’ll lose his job…

Read the rest of Evelin’s story here >

If you need one more reason to eat at Grand Central Bakery, here it is

One of many Grand Central Bakery locations in Portland, OR
One of many Grand Central Bakery locations in Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. Grand Central has provided paid sick days for workers for over 20 years!

In the recent dust-up over one Seattle coffee shop’s signs about – and surcharge for – paid sick days, you might have missed this comment from the owners of Grand Central Bakery:

…paid sick leave amounts to a relatively small thing for an employer translating to a relatively huge thing for a sick employee. For more than 20 years, we have provided paid sick days to our employees (along with health and dental insurance and vacation time). From that vantage point, we can say the benefits are many – high morale, healthier employees and customers, low employee turnover. Most significantly it creates a culture of trust.

Employees who feel supported by ownership find ways to improve the operations in that restaurant, they are willing to work harder during crunch times and they conduct themselves in the workplace with honesty and integrity. And we venture to guess that employee theft and giving out free product is a much bigger threat to the financial health of a restaurant than the impact of paid sick leave. As Matt Dillon says, you build it into the cost of running a restaurant. And we do so happily, because it’s the right thing to do. ~Leslie Cole, Grand Central Bakery communications manager

Today would be a great day to stop by your local Grand Central Bakery – there are locations in Seattle and Portland. Grab a loaf of fresh bread (or a sandwich, pastry, salad…you get the idea) – and be sure to let the manager know how much you appreciate Grand Central’s choice to support healthy and responsible prevention in their stores and in their community.