States Push Laws to Require Paid Sick Days
For school bus driver Jamille Aine, a cold is more than an inconvenience. His employer does not offer paid sick days, so if he can't shake the bug, he may not be able to pay his bills.
About 46 million U.S. workers lack paid sick days, but lawmakers in 12 states — including California, Connecticut, Minnesota and West Virginia — have proposed legislation in the past year that would require businesses to provide them.
Dale Butland of Ohioans for Healthy Families, an advocacy group pushing a November ballot initiative that would require employers to offer paid sick days, said the effort picked up steam in Columbus and other state capitals because federal legislation has stalled.
"This is the next frontier in assuring workplaces are safe," said Kate Kahan, director of the work and family program at the Washington-based National Partnership for Women & Families, which lobbies on paid sick leave and other workplace and health care issues.
Businesses — especially small companies — argue that forcing them to offer paid sick days hinders their ability to provide a flexible array of benefits, such as a mix of vacation and personal days that also may be used by employees when they are sick. And they say it's a costly new mandate for businesses already struggling through a contracting economy.
Bills requiring paid sick days were rejected or allowed to die in several state legislatures. Maine lawmakers rejected a paid sick leave bill. And for the second consecutive year, legislation died in the Connecticut House of Representatives after the state Senate passed it, leading a Senate sponsor to say she's lost hope.
"Unless some kind of miracle happens, I don't see it," said Sen. Edith Prague, a Democrat from eastern Connecticut.
But in several other states — Alaska, Minnesota, Vermont and West Virginia — legislation failed when lawmakers refused to take up paid sick leave bills before legislative deadlines passed, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Nearly all large companies already offer paid sick leave to at least some of their workers, but state and federal mandates could require them to expand the benefit.
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