News Briefs
No paid sick leave for parents means sick children in school
Oct 29, 2009 10:53 AM
When President Bill Clinton signed on to “welfare reform” in 1996, the fight against poverty shifted for better or worse from improving the safety net for the nation’s poor to securing jobs for the unemployed. “Ending welfare as we know it” wasn’t supposed to be replaced by low-paid, dead-end work with no benefits and no job security. Envisioned instead was employment for the jobless at a living wage, with paid sick leave, paid vacations, health insurance and adequate day care.
It hasn’t worked out that way. In a recent report looking at just one of those indicators, the Community Service Society of New York found that nearly half of working New Yorkers hold jobs without paid sick time, and two-thirds of low-income New Yorkers have no paid sick leave. The report, “What the Lack of Paid Leave Means for Working New Yorkers,” showed that moderate- and higher-income New Yorkers experienced a less dramatic decline in paid sick leave.
No surprise to UFT members, the report found that workers in union households were more likely to receive sick-leave benefits while those without union protections were more likely to feel compelled to send a sick child to school or day care, despite DOE urgings that sick children stay away from school.
The report also found that low-income workers without paid sick leave were more likely to go to work ill, receive threats from employers for missing work and use emergency room services because they were unable to take time off from work to get medical care during normal work hours regardless of whether they had health insurance.
Gotham Gazette, Oct. 19
