Debra Ness, President, National Partnership
Cross-posted from the Huffington Post.
This week, workers all across the country will be tweeting that question to candidates for office at all levels, asking them to support this basic workplace standard or explain why they will not. At a time when more than 40 million hardworking Americans can’t earn any paid sick time to use when they get stomach flu or need a medical test — and millions more can’t earn paid sick time to care for an ailing child — it’s a question we all need answered.
Right now in the United States, more than 40 percent of the private sector workforce — and more than 80 percent of low-wage workers — cannot earn a single paid sick day, no matter how many years they have been on the job, no matter how good their work.
We all pay a price for that. Nobody wins when restaurant workers with flu handle our food, nursing home staff report to work with strep, and sick children go to day care and infect other kids.
Paid sick days are essential to families’ health and economic security. It’s time to end the days when we force workers to either work sick or lose pay or their jobs – when parents have to choose between their jobs and sending sick children to school or child care.
Laws that let workers earn paid sick days are immensely popular. They are good for workers, families and businesses. They protect the public health. And they strengthen our economy. Laws that guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days are common sense, win-win advances the country needs.
But right now, these laws are the exception rather than the norm. Paid sick time laws are on the books — and working well — in San Francisco, the District of Columbia, Connecticut and now Seattle. But progress elsewhere has been stalled and, at the federal level, Congress has failed to make the issue a priority by passing the Healthy Families Act, which would guarantee workers the right to earn seven paid sick days a year.
It’s time to speak out and ask all candidates to tell us where they stand. That’s why the National Partnership is launching “seven days for sick days” on Twitter. Starting today, we’re using Twitter to ask candidates across the country: #RU4paidsickdays?
Joined by our allies who represent moms, workers, women, seniors, businesses, LGBT families, Latinos and others, we’re asking candidates to go on record in support of paid sick days. I hope you will join us. To make it easy, we’ve created an interactive map with a built-in custom tweet for candidates in every congressional district. It’s now as easy as click, click, click to ask your candidates #RU4paidsickdays?
Today is also the start of National Work and Family Month, when we recommit to building the kind of family friendly nation we all need. So join us, today, and throughout the week by using Twitter and other social media to ask candidates in your state to speak out on this issue.
I am a travel nurse. Healthcare travelers do not get paid sick days, so, if we don’t work, we don’t get paid. Also we are required to pay for the housing in which we reside while on an assignment, for the time we miss from work. What happens is we go to work sick, exposing not only the other staff, but also the patients and their families. Have any of you ever worn a mask for a twelve hour shift? I myself rarely get sick. I work nights, and try very hard to take care of myself, so I don’t get sick. Recently, a co-worker came to work sick. I contracted it, and have been ill for a week. The hospital even called me to come in to work due to another sick call, when I was at the peak of the illness and would not take no for an answer. Does this make sense ? I went in. I bought air born for my coworkers while I when I went to work, waore a mask in the patient rooms, and cleaned my work area with disinfectant wipes at the end of the shift. But it really makes me mad that I am not allowed any sick time, and that facilities demand that I, the travel nurse help them because the perm staff call in sick, very frequently. It makes me very angry that healthcare staffing agencies are collecting large amounts of money for the work I do, but I only receive a very small fraction of that, and do not receive any benefits. Staff, and the general public think the travel nurse is cleaning up, but that is not true!