You can be pretty sure that there will be a number of
controversial issues during every legislative session. These issues can involve easy to understand
issues or they can be very complicated both to understand and to resolve. I don’t envy members of the Education
Committee who are trying to redesign education funding to take some of the
pressure off property taxes; or members of the Health Care Committee who are
tracking the efforts to provide health care to all Vermonters within an
economically viable framework; or members of the money committees,
Appropriations and Ways & Means, who always seem to be trying to fit 10
pounds of expenses into an 8 pound bag of revenues.
One
issue generating controversy that I find easier to understand is whether all
employees should be entitled to at least some paid sick days. This issue seems to pit employees against
small business owners. The proposed
legislation, introduced in the House as H.208 and in the Senate as S.255, would
require employers to provide every employee at least one hour of paid sick
leave for every 30 hours worked, accruing annually up to 56 hours, i.e. seven
days, of paid time off. So, if an
employee only worked 20 hours per week, they would accumulate almost 35 hours
over the course of the year. An employer
with a paid sick leave policy that is comparable to or more generous than that
required by the legislation is not required to provide additional paid health
care time. Furthermore, any paid
time-off program such as vacation or combined time off (CTO) that is at least
as generous and can be taken for the same reasons as sick leave counts as
satisfying the requirements.
Many
small employers argue that they cannot afford to pay for this time off. They hire a limited number of part time
employees and depend on them to be on the job when scheduled. The restaurant industry, which typically runs
on very tight margins, employs workers at relatively low hourly wages which are
supplemented by tips. These workers can
hardly afford to take time off without pay.
According to the US Bureau of Labor statistics, 71% of employees in food
preparation and serving related occupations in New England do not have access
to paid sick time. Yet, an employee sick
with the flu puts both fellow employees and the clientele at risk. According to Dr. Burton Wilke of the Vermont
Public Health Association, a recent publication in the American Journal of
Public Health found that the provision of paid sick leave could reduce the
number of workplace-acquired cases of influenza by as much as 40%.
Women,
who make up two-thirds of minimum wage workers nationwide, are more likely than
men to have jobs without earned sick days or paid time off of any kind. Lindsay DesLauriers, a public policy advocate
at Voices for Vermont’s Children, recently testified before the Human Services
Committee that "The workforce has shifted in the past 70 years to include
more and more female breadwinners and female heads of household, and yet our
workplace standards have not adjusted at all. Women continue to
disproportionately bear the responsibilities for family life and are much more
likely than men to report working part time so that they can manage the demands
of family. Half of all women must miss work to care for their children when
they are sick compared to 30% of men, and half of these working mothers report
that they do not get paid when they stay home."
Whether it is because of personal illness or the illness of a dependent child or other family member, or because of an accidental injury, workers should be able to take a reasonable amount of time off without risking their livelihood. As a co-sponsor of H.208, I will be voting for its passage when it reaches the floor of the House.
