Washington,
D.C. is poised to become the
second jurisdiction in the nation to require employers to provide paid sick
days to their employees. Advocates
estimate that more than 210,000 workers in the nation’s capitol will benefit,
once the measure, unanimously approved by the D.C. Council March 4, goes into
effect.
“This is a tremendous victory,” says Karen M. Minatelli,
deputy director of the D.C.
Employment Justice Center,
an advocacy group that received a $25,000 grant last fall from the Public
Welfare Foundation to educate the public about the need for paid sick days as a
minimum workplace standard. Minatelli
says that the D.C. measure, like a San
Francisco ordinance that went into effect in February
2007, could prove especially important to younger workers and single parents of
young children, since they tend to cluster in low-wage service and construction
jobs that rarely include paid sick days. The measure should prove of particular benefit to women who, according to U.S. Census studies, head 84 percent of the District's single-headed households
But Minatelli cautions that the bill was only a “great first
step” toward her organization’s goal of covering all working people in the
District. “Obviously, this is a far cry
from the bill as originally introduced,” she says. During heated debate, the council, heeding
business community pleas, exempted workers with less than a year on the job. As
originally drafted, the bill made a 60-day exemption for new hires. The initial proposal mandated 10 sick days a
year for workers in businesses with more than five employees and five days a
year for smaller concerns. The council
made more generous concessions to small and medium-size businesses: the final version of the bill requires
businesses employing more than 100 people to offer seven sick days annually,
but those employing 25 to 99 workers need provide five sick days a year and
those with less than 25 workers, just three sick days a year.
The council excluded altogether certain types of health care
workers and all restaurant wait staff. “From a public health perspective, those are
not occupations that should be exempted,” says Minatelli. In addition, the council added a hardship
exemption for businesses that make a case that their financial viability is
threatened by the mandate.
Even so, says Minatelli, “We do think this is a really
important step that will be of great value to a lot of people in the District.”
“Providing paid sick and safe days to those working some of
our most grueling jobs is the right thing to do and benefits the whole
community,” says Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women
& Families, recipient of a $305,000, two-year Public Welfare Foundation
grant and coordinator of a national education campaign on the issue. “We are,
however, disappointed,” Ness adds, “that this
new measure has a hardship exemption and excludes some food service workers and
workers in the first year of their jobs.”
Some 14 other states and jurisdictions are debating paid
sick days requirements. Last month, the
Alaska Public Interest Group testified at a hearing on the issue in Juneau, where the state
legislature is considering a measure to guarantee workers one hour a week of
paid sick leave to care for themselves or family members. In Maine,
the state legislature is considering mandating up to five paid sick days a
year. “The public has already made the
connection: 87 percent of Maine voters believe
that Maine
should require paid sick days,” says Sarah Standiford, Executive Director of
the Maine Women’s Lobby, which is organizing a public education campaign around
the issue.
The Alaska and Maine advocacy
organizations are operating with funding for their education efforts from the
Public Welfare Foundation, which last year launched a two-year, $1 million
special initiative that is the first and largest of its kind devoted solely to
the paid sick days issue. To date, the
Foundation has made 16 grants of $1,085,000 to 14 organizations working on the
issue. In October, it made paid sick
days an integral part of its Workers’ Rights program.
The D.C. measure will become law once it is signed by Mayor
Adrian Fenty and passes a 90-day Congressional review.
