family leave

In the week before his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama took modest but important steps toward expanding US workers’ access to paid sick and family leave. Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, broke the news with a blog post on LinkedIn, where she explained the importance of paid leave: Anyone who has ever faced the challenge of raising or supporting a family, while holding down a job, has faced tough choices along the way, and likely felt stretched between the financial and personal needs of their family.…
At the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in Boston this week, the organization officially approved 17 policy statements, including one calling for the US to improve access to paid sick and family leave and one urging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require workplace injury and illness prevention programs. Having APHA on the record supporting these improvements will bolster ongoing campaigns for paid leave and OSHA's efforts to advance an injury and illness prevention standard. (Check out more news from Boston at the APHA Annual Meeting blog.)…