After Celebrating an Earned Sick Days Law, What’s Next? Top Tips on Implementation
By Liz Ben-Ishai
When San Francisco became the first jurisdiction in the country to pass an earned sick days law, when Connecticut became the first state, and when Seattle followed in the footsteps of its fellow west coast city, advocates and supporters cheered. Now, as Portland and New York City move to implement their recently passed sick days laws – and, hopefully, as others soon follow suit – we can continue to celebrate the pioneering earned sick days laws by ensuring that the hard work and lessons learned from the implementation process don’t go unheeded.
Over the past six months, CLASP has issued three briefs highlighting best practices gleaned from Connecticut, San Francisco, and Seattle. Now, advocates, policy makers, and administrators can learn from these jurisdictions by using our new consolidated “top tips” report about implementation. This report highlights the effectiveness of certain approaches used in all three jurisdictions (for example, the use of a website to provide important information to employees and employers), as well as diverse approaches that may work in some contexts, but not others (for example, using the school system to disseminate information, as San Francisco did).
Though new jurisdictions may face their own unique challenges, with the benefit of early adopters’ experiences, these newest cities implementing earned sick days laws have the opportunity to ensure a smooth and effective implementation process. Here’s hoping many more jurisdictions will have need for these top tips as we work together to build on the momentum of this movement!