Down to the Wire on Paid Sick Leave

On today’s “GO List” in the State House of Representatives is Senate Bill No. 913 AN ACT MANDATING EMPLOYERS PROVIDE PAID SICK LEAVE TO EMPLOYEES. (As amended by Senate Amendment Schedule "A").   Here is an Op Ed about it from yesterday’s (June 2, 2011) Greenwich Time

Sick leave legislation is good for employees - and employers
Written by Bill Gaston / with emphasis added   Click here for full article

    Last week, the Connecticut state Senate, by a single vote, 18-17, passed historic legislation requiring businesses with 50 or more workers to offer employees paid sick time.
    The significance of this landmark legislation -- passed in the face of implacable, lock-step opposition from big business lobbyists and local Republicans -- can hardly be overestimated. If passed by the state House, Governor Dannel Malloy has promised to sign the measure, which would make Connecticut the first state in the nation to offer paid sick days, a major step forward for public health and worker rights. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research has pointed out, the United States remains the only one of 22 top industrialized countries that fails to guarantee sick workers some form of paid sick leave.  […]
    A report released in 2010 from the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington, D.C., shows that implementing a paid sick leave bill would actually save Connecticut businesses nearly $73 million each year in reduced workforce turnover and the prevention of communicable diseases such as influenza.  […]
    If enacted, paid sick leave legislation would send the message that employees deserve to be treated like human beings when they (or their families) are sick, and that giving them the time to recover is the civilized thing to do, instead of having to come to work sick, and endanger the health of their co-workers.
    Due to the hard work of thousands of Connecticut residents, and the efforts of diligent Democratic legislators (and one brave Republican legislator, John Kissel), paid sick leave legislation is close to becoming a reality. Residents of the Nutmeg State should be proud to enact such common sense progressive legislation that benefits employers and employees alike.