All Featured Highlights: Paid Sick Days

• Apr 18, 2013  |  Jodie Levin-Epstein Testimony on Working Families Flexibility Act As the Committee on Education and the Workforce considers The Working Families Flexibility Act (H.R. 1406) sponsored by Representative Martha Roby (R-AL), CLASP urges the Committee not to move measure forward. A mission of the Committee is to protect the workforce; the bill would add a new wage rule that raises the specter of greater vulnerability for the non-exempt workforce. Since enforcement of basic wage rules is woefully under resourced, we need to fix that first. Download PDF
• Apr 02, 2013  |  Jodie Levin-Epstein Getting Down to Business Newsletter - April 2013 Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. Read Online
• Apr 01, 2013  |  Jodie Levin Epstein and Dr. Eileen Appelbaum Interview Protocol for MA Business Interviews on Earned Paid Sick Time Download PDF
• Mar 26, 2013  |  Andrea Lindemann Gilliam and Liz Ben-Ishai Implementing Earned Sick Day Laws: First Out of the Gate: San Francisco's Sick Days Law Implementing a new law is always a complex process. But what happens when you are the first jurisdiction in the country to pass such a law? This was the unique challenge facing San Francisco when it passed the nation's first earned sick days law in 2006. The City and County government took on the challenge admirably, employing a variety of creative strategies to conduct outreach to the public, write meaningful rules, and ensure the law would be properly enforced. Download PDF
• Mar 20, 2013  |  Jodie Levin-Epstein Business Voices: Implementation of Sick Days Laws is Straightforward Around the nation, city councils and state legislatures are increasingly considering legislation to establish a sick days’ law. Employers, particularly those who are not familiar with sick days’ policy, are leery of administering it. For some, this worry leads them to oppose passage of legislation. However, in locations where laws are already implemented, many businesses have stepped forward to acknowledge that administering sick days’ policy is actually pretty simple. Download PDF
• Mar 04, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Getting Down to Business Newsletter - March 2013 Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. Read Online
• Mar 01, 2013  |  CLASP and ASBC New Tool for Job Quality Advocates: A Primer on Business Certifications Today, CLASP and its partner, the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), released a new tool for job quality advocates, including advocates for earned sick days and paid family leave. The jointly produced brief provides advocates with a primer on the nuts and bolts of the business certification movement and suggests ways to foster fruitful relationships between the movement and campaigns for improved job quality, such as earned sick days campaigns. Read Online
• Feb 27, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Implementing Earned Sick Days Laws: Learning from Seattle's Experience Advocates in Seattle fought hard to build the support necessary to pass the city’s Paid Sick and Safe Time (PSST) Ordinance. But the hard work did not end when the law passed in September 2011. Once the ink on Seattle’s ordinance had dried, the process of implementing the law began. Download PDF
• Jan 18, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Earned Sick Days: What Consumers Want While many people assume that paid sick days are widely available to all, that is far from the truth for too many workers. This critical workplace protection is important both to workers and consumers. A new poll demonstrates that restaurants that do not offer their employees the opportunity to earn paid sick days do so at their own peril. The survey, put out by the National Consumers League (NCL), found that 92 percent of consumers believe that it is very important or important that the servers and cooks in the restaurants they patronize do not cook or serve while sick. Well over half of respondents agreed on the importance of allowing these workers to earn paid sick days. With consumers expressing a clear preference for fair sick leave policies, the message to business owners is also clear: to satisfy customers, employers must provide restaurant workers with just working conditions, including earned sick days. Policymakers should take note as well. Read Online
• Jan 07, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai For Safe Food System, Workers Need Earned Sick Days On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration proposed two broad new food safety rules, marking the first major food safety rulemaking since the 1930s. These rules are a major step forward for consumer safety. However, policymakers should take note that a major gap in labor protections for workers who handle our food continues to imperil the safety of our food system: most farmworkers and restaurant workers, as well as other food chain workers, receive no earned sick days, which means many are forced to come to work when sick. This lack of protections is not only unfair to workers, but also 1) dangerous for consumers, who risk infection and illness when they eat food handled by sick workers, 2) bad for businesses, and 3) harmful to the U.S. economy. Read Online
• Feb 01, 2013  |  Work/Life & Job Quality Getting Down to Business Newsletter - February 2013 Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. Read Online
• Dec 18, 2012  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Businesses Can Avoid the High Cost of Workplace Injuries by Offering Earned Sick Days Add one more piece of evidence to the increasingly-difficult-to-ignore body of facts that suggests earned sick days – particularly for lower-wage workers – are crucial to our country’s economic success and families’ economic security. A new study by health economist J. Paul Leigh shows that the economic cost of workplace injuries among low-wage workers amounted to more than $39 billion in 2010. The high cost of workplace injuries among low-wage workers is particularly striking in light of recent research demonstrating that there is a significant correlation between lack of paid sick leave and the incidence of nonfatal occupational injuries. Read Online
• Oct 05, 2010  |  Andrea Lindemann The US Women's Chamber of Commerce Supports Paid Sick Days The USWCC understands that paid sick days are good for business and that often women-owned businesses are uniquely situated to support paid sick days. Read Online
• Oct 05, 2010  |  Andrea Lindemann When Businesses Cry Wolf The Cry Wolf Project sets out to demonstrate that so-called liberal policies such as FMLA do not yield the dire consequences that business opposition so readily predicts. Read Online
• Oct 05, 2010  |  Andrea Lindemann Prescription for Preventive Health Care: Add Paid Sick Days Paid sick days increase the ability of low-income workers to take time off for preventative care. As the nation implements health care reform, including increasing coverage for preventative care, it should think about paid sick days as a key issue to enable workers to access this care. Read Online
• Oct 05, 2010  |  Andrea Lindemann Small Business in the Spotlight: New York Restaurant Provides Paid Sick Days As a local paid sick days bill moves through the New York City Council, it is important to listen to voices like Rosanne Martino, who manages an upscale New York restaurant that supports providing paid sick days to workers. Read Online