Why wait until the fall flu season returns to help NYC families?
Published 02:23, May the 20th, 2009
There’s no time to be sick
City officials and health experts are telling parents to keep sick children home, but what do you do when you have a job where you don’t have any paid sick days for yourself, much less paid days off to care for a sick child? For too many people, staying home means loss of pay, and maybe even their jobs — an unacceptable risk in the current economy.
The numbers of working New Yorkers without paid sick days is startlingly large. According to a 2008 Community Service Society survey, nearly 4 out of 10 — or 39 percent — working parents with kids in New York City public schools do not have a single paid sick day. Among poor public school parents, who can least afford to go for a few days without pay, the figure is much higher: 69 percent do not have any paid sick days. Overall, it is estimated that more than 900,000 workers in New York City do not have paid sick leave.
New Yorkers want to fix that. More than 3 out of 4 surveyed by the Community Service Society said there should be a law that requires employers to give workers at least seven paid sick days a year — and New Yorkers favored this proposal even presented with every possible argument against it.
Congress is considering a bill — the Healthy Families Act — that would mandate paid sick days for workers. However, New York can follow the lead of cities like San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Milwaukee that have all adopted paid sick days measures and pass a local law right now that would enable all workers to earn a minimal number of paid sick days
Why wait until the fall flu season returns with a vengeance at the start of the new school year to provide protection for working families? Making sure workers can afford to stay home to recover or care for their children without losing a paycheck is not only good policy, it is good common sense.