Paid Sick, Family, and Medical Leave

Due to a widespread lack of paid family and medical leave, workers have to make difficult choices between their careers and their caregiving responsibilities precisely when they need their paychecks the most, such as following the birth of a child or when they or a loved one falls ill. This lack of choice often leads workers to cut their leave short. It can also lead workers to forgo much-needed pay, leave the labor force altogether, or make poor-quality care arrangements for their children or other loved ones.

Our current lack of paid family leave requires workers to make impossible choices between work and family and hampers their economic security, and this burden clearly falls disproportionately on women. However, the solution to this problem is achievable: some individual companies have implemented their own family leave policies, almost all industrialized nations have a comprehensive national paid family leave program, and a small number of states have created successful family leave insurance programs. EARN groups are working to expand access to paid leave through all of these channels. In some cities and states, they are working on laws that would require employers to provide their employees with paid family leave. In others, they are helping to craft government insurance programs that would supplement wages during leave, and encouraging federal lawmakers to consider similar programs nationwide.

Because there is no federal law that ensures all workers are able to earn paid sick days, millions of workers throughout the United States are forced to go to work when they are sick. When someone goes to work while sick, they are less productive, more prone to mistakes, and more likely to spread a contagious diseases than if they stayed home. Lack of paid sick days is a serious problem, particularly for low-wage workers, who are far less likely to have access to paid sick days than higher-wage workers.

State and local laws that grant all workers the ability to earn paid sick days regardless of their job or wage level have provided critical financial security to workers and their families. Access to paid sick days allows workers to rest, get the health care they need, and fully recover from an illness before returning to work. It also allows workers to continue paying their monthly bills, even in the event of illness. EARN groups have researched the impact of paid sick days legislation on workers, businesses, and government budgets, and provided support to paid sick days campaigns in states and cities across the country.

Paid family leave helps more people stay in their jobs, increasing parental labor force participation, especially among women.

Publications

Strengthening Pathways to the Middle Class

Working full time, year round is not enough to guarantee a middle-class standard of living. Nearly one in five working Iowa families, in fact, does not earn enough to meet basic needs. There are a number of things that could be done to help such families move into the middle class. Policies are needed to improve both the demand-side and the supply-side of the labor market. On the demand side, we need more middle-class jobs with decent wages and benefits. On the supply side, we need more workers with the education and skills needed to qualify for most good-paying jobs.

What we focus on here, however, is a set of policies called work supports that help low-wage working families survive and keep their children out of poverty, and that provide a stepping stone to a better education and a better job. We lay out a set of policies to strengthen these pathways to the middle class:
• Reform Iowa’s Child Care Assistance program to eliminate a huge disincentive called the cliff and to make it more effective as a help to parents trying to improve their skills and raise their wage level.
• Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to provide even stronger support to low-wage workers, encourage more work effort, and keep children out of poverty.
• Expand the Child and Dependent Care Credit to cushion the loss of Child Care Assistance.

These reforms should be combined with education policies that ensure future generations of Iowans receive a quality and affordable education, from preschool through post-secondary institutions. This will require expansion of the universal preschool program, support of K-12 education through adequate funding of state foundation aid, and continued efforts to make post-secondary education more affordable by restraining tuition growth.

It is time for earned sick leave in Michigan

Michigan should enact an earned sick leave law. This would help low-paid workers keep their jobs, increase productivity and reduce employee turnover, and protect the health of other employees and the public.

Many middle- and upper-income workers have the ability to take time off for sickness or family needs. But for many low-paid workers in Michigan, becoming sick can cause loss of money or even a job. It can put a worker in the difficult position of having to decide whether to stay home and lose wages, or to go to work and risk becoming sicker, work less productively and expose coworkers (and in many cases the public) to illness. Parents may feel pressure to forgo needed doctor checkups and medical care for themselves or their children because they cannot afford to lose the wages due to absence from work. They may even send their child to school sick because they cannot afford to stay home to take care of them.

An earned sick leave law in Michigan would require most employers to bank sick time for their workers based on the number of hours they have worked. Several cities and states have already passed sick leave laws and it is time for Michigan to do the same.

Valuing Families at Work: The Case for Paid Sick Leave

Paid sick leave is critical for families for health care and economic reasons. Parents should not be forced to choose between caring for themselves or family members and their jobs. The lack of paid sick leave adds stress to families, exposes co-workers unnecessarily, and risks the spread of infectious diseases to children in schools and child care centers. As with other employee-provided benefits, such as health insurance and paid vacation, paid sick leave tends to be less available in lower-wage jobs.

Therefore, those who can least afford to lose any of their income are the most likely to have to choose between working and taking time to care for themselves or a child when they are sick. This intersection of low-wage work and the lack of benefits like paid sick leave helps keep the working poor from climbing out of their situation.

Guaranteeing all workers at least one week of paid sick leave would do much to help low-income working families and their children. In New Mexico, however, only half of private-sector workers have access to paid sick leave. This is the worst rate in the nation. New Mexico, with its high percentage of low-wage jobs and a correspondingly high rate of working families who are low-income, would have much to gain from enacting paid leave legislation.

Employee Experience with Seattle Paid Sick and Safe Leave

In September 2012, Seattle became the third U.S. city to implement a paid sick leave ordinance. By early 2015, more than 20 cities and four states had paid sick leave laws on the books. Seattle’s law requires employers with more than four employees (full-time equivalents) to provide paid sick and safe leave for the health needs of workers and their family members, and to deal with the consequences of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

Initial evaluations of Seattle’s law and experiences in other localities suggest that many workers are likely to remain unaware of their rights to sick days. Lower wage workers are the least likely to be offered paid leave voluntarily by their employers, and with little bargaining power, are often unable to assert their legal rights even if aware of them.

To gain additional insight into the extent to which lower wage workers in Seattle are aware of the sick leave law and have access to paid sick leave, the Economic Opportunity Institute conducted a survey in partnership with the YWCA Seattle|King|Snohomish in the spring of 2015. Altogether, 83 people who had worked in Seattle during the preceding year participated. The responses to this survey provide insight into how widely Seattle’s sick leave law is being followed, but are not statistically valid for all Seattle workers.

In 2014, Seattle took the additional step of adopting its first citywide minimum wage ordinance. With multiple labor standards in effect, the City of Seattle is in the process of building a more robust enforcement capacity and undertaking renewed outreach to vulnerable workers in partnership with community organizations.