• Businesses Play Pivotal Role in March Paid Sick Days Wins
• Small Businesses Speak  Up for  Federal Healthy Families Act
• Direct Care Business Owner Offers Story on Paid Time Off
• Business Quotes on How the Sky Won’t Fall When Sick Days are Implemented
• AP Story Showcases Businesses and Paid Sick Days
• New Survey Findings on Who Does –and Does Not – Get Paid  Leave
• New Tool for Advocates: Survey Your Own Businesses about Sick Days
• Juicy Couture:  Where HR Designs a Cut in Hours and Holes in Sick Days
• In Case You Missed It: Employer Video on Sick Days

Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. If you have news you want to share with your colleagues around the country, let us know.

Three local paid sick days’ wins, all in the month of March, were heard around the nation:  Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (awaiting the Mayor’s signature), and New York City (a certainty-in-the-making after a deal was negotiated).  The moment and the momentum are huge.  Businesses played a pivotal role in advocacy in each city.  The Everybody Benefits campaign in Portland was spearheaded by Andrea Paluso, executive director of Family Forward Oregon, who observes that “a vital piece of the win in Portland was engagement of businesses in key sectors—from restaurants to retailers to construction.”  In Philly, over 30 businesses coalesced in support of the measure that passed the City Council.  Marianne Bellesorte, senior director of policy for Pathways PA, explains that “business supporters of sick days are busy keeping their businesses running, so helping leaders stay engaged is hard to accomplish, but worth its weight in gold.”

In New York City, small business support throughout the campaign and at a recent hearing was important in making the case for paid sick days. Sherry Leiwant, co-president of A Better Balance, explains that “the Speaker of our City Council who is running for mayor has consistently said she opposed the bill because it would hurt small business.  Many small businesses came forward to say that far from hurting small business, a requirement of paid sick days would level the playing field and ensure that businesses doing the right thing with respect to their workers wouldn't be at a disadvantage.  The strong voices of small business were really important in demonstrating that paid sick days is not anti-business, which ultimately helped us succeed."  Soon, over a million workers in the Big Apple will have sick days for the first time.  These groundbreaking wins around the nation should be a wake-up call to Congress about the need for strong federal legislation.  To read more about this, check out our new Huffington Post piece.

When the Healthy Families Act (HFA) was reintroduced in March 2013, it enjoyed support from key voices in the debate:  small businesses.  The Main Street Alliance, together with the American Sustainable Business Council, used HFA’s introduction to highlight business support for federal action.  Through nationwide press outreach, they offered critical insight into how effective local sick day laws have been, as well as the need for a national standard:

  James Freeman, co-owner of Blue Bottle Coffee, did not offer paid sick days before the San Francisco Paid Sick Leave Ordinance
  went into effect in 2007.  Freedman said the Ordinance “gave us the gentle nudge to do the right thing. If a company believes its
  best asset is its workers, then a federal law is the way to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”

Since 2004, HFA has been introduced in each Congress.  If we’re going to finally get the job done in 2013, it’s going to take active participation by the business communities.  And we’re happy to report that they’re already making their voices heard.

Is your paid leave campaign reaching out to employers of direct care workers?  If so, have we got a story for you!  The Direct Care Alliance (DCA) has posted a new blog piece: “Why Giving My Direct Care Workers Paid Time Off is a Good Investment.”  The Alliance is happy for you to reprint the story or cross-post it on your own site; just make sure they get a credit line.

Fear of the unknown is pretty potent.  So, businesses that have never offered paid sick days or been subject to paid sick day laws may be reticent to take the issue on.  A new CLASP resource for advocates showcases quotes from businesses in cities with earned sick days’ laws. These owners explain how implementation is straight-forward and, in fact, becomes old hat pretty quickly.  See and use these business quotes. 

After a busy March that saw the Healthy Families Act introduced in Congress and breaking developments in Philadelphia, Portland, and New York City, the Associated Press tasked Joyce M. Rosenberg with writing a story on sick days through the lens of business. To read the full piece, “Paid sick time becomes a bigger issue for small businesses as more cities require paid leave,” click here.

Some important survey data about worker leave is tucked into  “America’s Lower-Wage Workforce: Employer and Worker Perspectives,” a new report from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that examines education and training, as well as career advancement related to workers with annual earnings  of $35,000 or less (full-time equivalent).  The survey asks about paid leave within a firm.

The survey found that among employers, over half – 55 percent – provide paid sick days to some employees (not necessarily all employees).  Among this subset of employers who provide benefits to at least one employee, about a third – 31 percent –do no offer it at all or offer it to only some of their low-wage workers. The report also notes that firms behave differently, depending on how small a share of their workers are low-wage: “Those employers with a smaller proportion of lower-wage workers are more likely to offer benefits to any employees compared to firms with a larger proportion of lower-wage workers. Furthermore, firms with a smaller proportion of lower-wage workers are more likely to restrict many of these benefits to their higher-wage workers, including paid sick days, paid vacation, and paid holidays.”  To read the full report and survey, published by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and commissioned by the Joyce Foundation and Hitachi Foundation, click here.

The paid sick time campaign in Massachusetts has an ally in the state legislature—a legislator with a background in business and a keen interest in learning more about sick leave practices.  This legislator wanted to dig deeper on this by conducting a business survey, so she turned to the experts. Eileen Applebaum, senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) and Jodie Levin-Epstein, deputy director at CLASP, teamed up to draft a survey tool that can be adapted for your own campaign.   To access the survey tool, click here.  And if you have any suggestions on how we can improve it, please let us know!

Juicy Couture:  Where HR Designs a Cut in Hours and Holes in Sick Days

At the Retail Action Project in New York, the “JUST HOURS” campaign is focused on Juicy Couture, where there has been “a rash of firings among full-time workers [who are] replaced by part-time workers who also make less per hour. Meanwhile, current part-time workers just got their hours cut and capped so they can no longer receive benefits[…] This means the wide majority of Juicy workers don't qualify for paid sick days[and] vacations and won't get benefits under the Affordable Health Care Act...”  To learn more, visit JUST HOURS online.

In Case You Missed It

Have you seen the D.C. earned sick days’ employer video, co-sponsored by CLASP, the American Sustainable Business Council, ROC-DC, Social Venture Network, and the US Women’s Chamber of Commerce? Take a look—and take it along to a meeting with your local businesses!!!