Sick Leave for all?

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

http://www.alternet.org/story/47273/"http://www.healthcare-now.org/"

3. healthy families act

according to washington post columnist amy joyce, "nearly half of all private-sector workers in the united states do not have a single day of paid sick leave. and more do not have a paid day off that can be used to care for a sick child." seventy-five percent of low-wage workers lack paid sick leave -- the very people who can least afford to take a day off and still be able to pay the bills. in 2005 senator edward kennedy and representative rosa delauro introduced the healthy families act (s 932 and hr 1902)

[Simpleplan]

Yeah, I just graduated nursing school and now work in a hospital. All my prior jobs never offered sick leave. In fact, vacation was pretty rare. I had one job that offered a christmas bonus that was equal to 1 average work week caluclated by the hours you worked that year divided by the number of weeks. I thought that was a good deal. Few people called in with a no work no pay policy.

[Julia RN]

Just posting some resources as an update to this important issue:

Sen Kennedy re-introduced the Healthy Families Act in the current session as S.910 and the companion bill in the 110th Congress is H.R. 1542 (Rep. Rosa DeLauro)

Links to the legislation are:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR01542: and

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN00910:

The National Partnership for Women & Families and the Healthy Families Act Coalition have a website where you can take action and learn about state campaigns as well:

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=psd_solution

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer