Paid Sick Leave: An Idea Whose Time Has Come for Mass. Workers

An Act Establishing Paid Sick Days (HD 1726 and SD 624) sponsored by Sen. Patricia Jehlen (D-2nd Middlesex), Rep. Kay Khan (D-11th Middlesex) and a number of other state legislators is one of the best bills we've seen proposed at the State House in quite a while. The more so because it seems to have some legs, if the energy at this week's rally - staged by the Mass. Paid Leave Coalition and MomsRising.org - was any gauge.

One of things that has made it cheaper for employers force workers into bad temp, part-time and other contingent jobs has been the lack of laws and regulatory apparatus that mandate benefits of all kinds - up to and including national health care.

This new bill, if passed, will do a great job of redressing part of that corporate-backed structural injustice. It will mandate something that workers in other countries - and in unions everywhere - have had for a long time. It will give Mass. workers the ability to stay home when sick, or when a loved one is sick, without losing income. In a society that is still, we hasten to point out, built on the idea that money is required for life's basic necessities.

The key provisions of the bill are as follows:

• All employees may earn up to 7 paid sick days per year, at a rate of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked.
• All employers are required to participate unless they already offer more generous benefits.
• Employees may use leave intermittently and on a reduced work schedule basis.
• Paid sick days may be used by employees for themselves or to care for their child, spouse, parent or parent of spouse.

If the that sounds like a unfair burden on state business to some readers, then perhaps the study "Valuing Good Health in Massachusetts: The Costs and Benefits of the Paid Sick Days Act" released at the lobby day by the Institute for Women's Policy Research will help convince you. A classic cost-benefit analysis, as the title implies, the study points out that although Mass. employers would pay $218 million annually in wages, payroll taxes, payroll-based employment benefits and administrative expenses under the law, they would save a total of $348 million annually. Part of that equation is money saved in health costs for co-workers made sick by working with sick workers forced to work to avoid losing wages. A public health spin that's certainly hard to ignore.

Plus, it's just the right thing to do. People who work should be able to take days off when they're sick. Especially workers who often get no vacation or breaks of any kind like the aforementioned contingent workers - many of whom will still slip through the cracks of this Paid Sick Days Act because they are not considered employees when they work as "independent contractors" of various kinds. But the Act will go a long way towards helping workers who are purposely misclassified as "part-timers" or "long-term temps" to avoid paying them benefits. And that's certainly a big step in the right direction.

Open Media Boston therefore supports the passage of An Act Establishing Paid Sick Days, and encourages all our viewers to contact your state representatives and senators and ask them to support it through to enactment at the end of this legislative cycle.