Dodd preparing emergency legislation seven days of paid sick leave

[liberal N proud]

The idea of mandatory paid sick leave has been kicking around Congress for years. But as more people get sick with H1N1 flu virus, it could become a reality.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., announced this week that he's preparing emergency legislation that would require employers to provide up to seven days of paid sick leave to employees if they or their children get sick with the swine or seasonal flu.

The paid leave also would cover parents of children whose schools are closed because of flu outbreaks. About 600 schools nationwide have temporarily shut their doors as the disease spreads.

In the House this month, two California Democrats, Reps. George Miller and Lynn Woolsey, introduced a similar measure that would guarantee up to five paid sick days per year for a worker sent home or told to stay home by an employer for a contagious illness. A hearing on that bill is scheduled for next week.

Dodd calls paid sick leave a matter of basic fairness but as the H1N1 flu spreads, it's also become a public health concern because many workers who don't have paid sick leave can't afford to stay home. They go to work sick and then infect others around them, according to testimony earlier this week before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families.

And it's those typically low-income workers who have the most need, and who come in frequent contact with the public serving food and working in nursing homes and child care centers, Dodd said.

Just 1 in 4 low-wage workers has paid sick leave, according to Labor Department data.

While many details of Dodd's proposal are sketchy, the measure would go into effect in 15 days after being signed into law and would expire in two years.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/sixel/6716198.html


This LA Times article says they may act as early as next week:
Congress plans to consider legislation next week that would guarantee workers paid sick time.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-swine-flu-workplace13-2009nov13,0,5633973.story

[RC]

1. If we had Government run Single Payer, Universal Health Care, this would not be necessary.

Bills like this are just temporary patches on a already cobbled together health care system that we have.
Let's do it right in the first place: Government run Single Payer, Universal Health Care.

[fasttense]

3. How would single payer health care prevent sick employees from coming into work to sneeze all

over you and your food?

[KittyWampus]

4. Single Payer would do nothing to address enabling sick people to stay home and get paid.

[mopinko]

6. i add my

nuh-uh. single payer would be great in a lot of ways. but it ain't gonna change the wage and hour laws by magic. or saintly intervention.

[fasttense]

2. And I'm sure RepubliCONS and CEOs are going to torpedo it.

Because they just love the thought of their minimum waged server, sneezing and coughing over the food they serve them.

[Lyric]

5. It should cover parents whose children HAVE the flu, too--not just the ones whose schools are closed

More people are stuck at home because THEIR kids are sick than are stuck at home because the school is closed.

[Blue State Blues]

7. It does

It covers a parent who has to stay home to take care of a sick child AND a parent who has to look after a well-child whose school is closed to contain an outbreak.

I think the school closure thing was added after the H1N1 outbreak this spring, when schools were closed to contain the outbreak, but parents who had to work let their kids go to the malls and other public spaces, spreading the flu even though they didn't have symptoms.

[Blue State Blues]

8. Kicking because I'm home with a sick kid right now

And because I believe every parent should have the ability to take care of their kids when they're sick without fearing they'll lose the job that allows them to feed their kids.

[TheKentuckian]

9. Long, long, long overdue regardless of HCR (nt)

[Sebass1271]

10. They should make that mandatory and permanent.

not everyone enjoys paid sick leave at their place of employment. It is usually two or three days that are offered. But imagine you having to have a major surgery and required to get back to work in three days??

Dodd should make this legislation PERMANENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND not let it expired in two years.