paid leave
kkrisberg | January 13, 2015BuzzFeed reporter David Noriega investigated work-related fatalities among Latino construction workers, finding that the risk of dying on the job is on the rise for such workers, who are losing their lives in greater numbers and at disproportionate rates than others in the industry. He writes:
After the housing bust bottomed out in 2010, the fatality rate among Latino construction workers rose by nearly 20%. For non-Latinos, the fatality rate has dropped by more than 5%.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in…
cmonforton | December 24, 2014While we take a breather during this holiday season, we’re re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on June 30, 2014.
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
Last week’s White House Summit on Working Families – hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Department of Labor, and the Center for American Progress – served both as a pitch to employers to adopt more family-friendly policies, and as a push for policies that require all employers to evolve for 21st-century realities. Wages, paid leave, flexibility, and caregiving were major topics in the day-long…
kkrisberg | December 2, 2014“Cows don’t know holidays,” says Alfredo Gomez, a 56-year-old dairy worker in southeastern New Mexico. “Here, there’s no Christmas.”
That’s an opening quote from Joseph Sorrentino’s article on the conditions dairy farm workers face in New Mexico, where he reports that milk production topped $1.5 billion last year and the industry employs thousands of workers. Published yesterday in In These Times, the article chronicles the dangerous conditions that farm workers face as well as the lives of dairy farm animals. Sorrentino reports:
“There’s no training — you just start working,” says Gustavo…
kkrisberg | November 4, 2014The experience of Pennsylvania nurse Jessica Wheeler starts off Esther Kaplan’s piece on workplace speedups in The Nation. The article begins:
Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn’t breathe and several others under her care. “I called the supervisor to ask for anybody—a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn’t get it, and my patient ended up coding.” Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early…
lborkowski | October 28, 2014A new Data Note about Kaiser Family Foundation survey findings highlights how this country’s lack of nationwide paid sick leave places a disproportionate burden on women with children – and is particularly hard on low-income mothers. In Balancing on Shaky Ground: Women, Work and Family Health, Usha Ranji and Alina Salganicoff begin by noting that 70% of mothers with children under 18 are in the labor force. Then they report the results of survey questions on who takes charge of children’s healthcare and whether they have paid leave time to fulfill these responsibilities.
The 2013 Kaiser Women…
lborkowski | October 2, 2014Last month, when California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Health Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 into law, he made his state the second in the nation with a law mandating paid sick days. In 2011, Connecticut became the first state to require that employers let workers earn and use paid sick time – although, it only applies to businesses with 50 or more employees. California’s new law, which takes effect July 1, 2015, exempts some classes of workers but otherwise applies to all employers with at least one employee.
In November, Massachusetts voters will decide whether to add their…
kkrisberg | August 22, 2014After nearly a decade of hoping state legislators would pass an earned paid sick time law, advocates in Massachusetts decided it was time to put the question to voters. Now, in November, voters will have the chance to help improve the lives of nearly 1 million workers who can’t earn one, single hour of sick leave and are often left to choose between caring for themselves or a loved one, paying the bills or losing a job.
“This is about fundamental fairness in the workplace,” said Elizabeth Toulan, a senior attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services and former coordinator of the Massachusetts…
lborkowski | June 30, 2014Last week’s White House Summit on Working Families – hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Department of Labor, and the Center for American Progress – served both as a pitch to employers to adopt more family-friendly policies, and as a push for policies that require all employers to evolve for 21st-century realities. Wages, paid leave, flexibility, and caregiving were major topics in the day-long event, and speaker after speaker returned to the same themes. I was honored to attend the event, and left it feeling hopeful that we’ll keep seeing improvements in workplace…
lborkowski | May 12, 2014Most of us probably expressed some appreciation yesterday for our mothers. Despite the brunches, flower sales, and media attention lavished on moms each Mother's Day, though, US policy doesn't express as much appreciation for mothers (or fathers) as it should. Jennifer Senior shared this graphic on Twitter:
When Australia passed a new parental leave law in 2010, the US became the only industrialized nation that does not provide paid leave to mothers of newborns. As Senior pointed out in her tweet, Pakistan is more progressive than the US in this regard (mothers there get 12 weeks of paid…
lborkowski | April 7, 2014At an appearance at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida last month, President Obama spoke about how the problems of stagnant wages and inadequate paid leave affect women workers:
Today, more women are their family’s main breadwinner than ever before. But on average, women are still earning just 77 cents on every dollar that a man does. Women with college degrees may earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less over the course of her career than a man at the same educational level. And that’s wrong. This isn’t 1958, it’s 2014. That’s why the first bill I signed into law was called the…
lborkowski | March 7, 2014A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Jim Morris, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer in a collaboration between the Weather Channel, InsideClimate News, and The Center for Public Integrity: Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale: Big Oil and Bad Air on the Texas Prairie
Brigid Schulte in the Washington Post: 'Mad Men' era of U.S. family policy coming to an end?
Tom Frieden at The Health Care Blog: CDC: Together We Can Provide Safer Patient Care
Farida Jhabvala Romero at Reporting on Health: California County Seeks to Eliminate Health Safety Net for the Undocumented
Ted Genoways at OnEarth: Hog Wild:…
lborkowski | February 13, 2014After having delivered prime-time telecasts from the Olympic Games since 1988, NBC’s Bob Costas had to step aside due to a pink eye infection. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff opined that Bob Costas did the right thing, noting, “People turning up to work sick is actually a vexing problem for employers that could, by some estimates, cost them as much as $150 billion a year.” Sick employees showing up to work can more easily spread their diseases to co-workers and customers, as well as fellow carpoolers or transit riders.
In Costsas’ case, his initial reluctance to stay home (or in his hotel room) to…
lborkowski | January 29, 2014In last night's State of the Union speech, President Obama addressed several ways to "make sure our economy honors the dignity of work, and hard work pays off for every single American." Here's what he said about wage increases:
To every mayor, governor, state legislator in America, I say, you don't have to wait for Congress to act; Americans will support you if you take this on. And as a chief executive, I intend to lead by example. Profitable corporations like Costco see higher wages as the smart way to boost productivity and reduce turnover. We should too. In the coming weeks I will issue…
lborkowski | December 12, 2013Today, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced the Family and Medical Leave Insurance Act, or FAMILY Act, federal legislation to create a "social insurance" system for paid medical and family leave. A new office within the Social Security Administration would administer the system, which would be funded by a payroll tax (two-tenths of one percent of workers' wages, or $1.50 per week for the average worker). Eligible employees could receive 66% of their monthly wages, up to a capped amount, for up to 12 weeks while dealing with their own serious…
lborkowski | November 6, 2013At 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.)…
lborkowski | October 29, 2013I spent much of yesterday at a hearing held by the District of Columbia City Council’s Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs – but I didn’t manage to stay for the entire 11 hours. Nearly 150 witnesses signed up to testify about the two main issues under consideration: raising the city’s minimum wage, and improving its paid-sick-leave law, which denies many workers access to paid sick days. The presence of so many witnesses, and the many hours they and Committee Chair Vincent Orange spent in the hearing room, demonstrate the importance of these issues that affect so many…
lborkowski | April 12, 2013Yesterday, the Philadelphia City Council fell one vote short of overriding Mayor Michael Nutter's veto of legislation that would have required businesses with more than five employees to let workers earn paid sick leave. This was the second time the Council had passed a paid sick leave bill, only to have it vetoed.
The news for workers was better in New York City late last month, when legislators reached a compromise: a paid sick leave law that will only apply to businesses with at least 15 employees, but that nonetheless will provide this important benefit to an estimated one million workers…
lborkowski | March 21, 2013Last week, Portland, Oregon, became the fifth US jurisdiction to require employers to let workers earn paid sick leave. (The state of Connecticut and the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC also have paid sick leave laws; Milwaukee voters also approved one, but then the state passed a law barring cities from adopting such policies.) Under the Portland ordinance, businesses with at least six employees will have to allow workers to earn one hour of paid sick time for each hour worked, up to 40 hours a year. Smaller employers can provide unpaid sick time.
The law will go into…
lborkowski | February 11, 2013Celeste and I have an op-ed in the Washington Post's local opinion section about DC's paid sick leave law, which contains an exception that's especially problematic during flu season: it doesn't cover tipped restaurant workers. Read "Your meal shouldn't come with a side of the flu" at the Washington Post's site.
And if you want to eat at restaurants where workers have paid sick days (and other benefits many of us take for granted), check out the Restaurant Opportunities Center's 2013 Dining Guide, or download the accompanying iPhone or Android app for your city.
lborkowski | January 11, 2011According to new research from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, in 2010 44 million private-sector US employees, or 42% of the workforce, lacked access to paid sick time. This IWPR analysis distinguishes between employees who are eligible for paid sick time vs. those who can actually access it, because employers often don't allow for the use of paid sick time by employees in their first months on the job. IWPR reports that new employees have to wait an average of 3.5 months to access paid sick days.
The occupational categories with the lowest percentages of private-sector employees…