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Dear friend,
Too often, American workers are forced to choose between taking time off to care for their health and receiving a paycheck.
So I joined my colleague Senator Patty Murray on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to introduce the Healthy Families Act to allow workers to earn paid sick leave. This is about making sure that people can take time off when they are ill, need to care for a sick family member, obtain preventive care, or address the impacts of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault.
The legislation would allow workers at businesses with at least 15 employees to earn up to 56 hours, or seven days, of paid sick leave each year. Businesses that already provide paid sick leave would not have to change their current policies, as long as they meet the minimum standards of the bill.
Studies show that paid sick leave can reduce the spread of contagious diseases like the flu and that a national paid sick days policy would reduce emergency room visits by 1.3 million annually, saving $1.1 billion a year.
I hope my colleagues in the Senate and House will join us and help make sure this legislation becomes law.
Sincerely,
Visit my website: kaine.senate.gov
"Editorial comment: Meh. In my lifetime I've done very few jobs that came with paid sick leave. Mostly I've avoided flu by avoiding jobs where people are crowded together...for instance, when office workers don't have separate offices, they all breathe on each other all day, and fast-mutating viruses like Norwalk Flu just keep going around and around and around. Paid sick leave is fun, and quarantine is a very pleasant and public-spirited thing if only extroverts had enough sense to take it, but my observation was that, in offices that gave paid sick leave, flu circulated anyway. The sicker extroverts get, the more they want to rush up and grab other people and breathe on them.
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