MAP: On Paid Sick Leave, NYC Tries to Join the Rest of the World

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-639527p1.html">Alike You</a>/Shutterstock

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The United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t give sick workers paid leave.

Now some New York City politicians are trying to change that—at least for their little corner of the country. A proposed city law would require most employers to give staff at least five days of paid sick leave each year. A veto-proof majority of City Council members support the bill, which has both grassroots and glitzy backers, but Council Speaker Christine Quinn (who killed a similar bill in 2010) refuses to bring it to a vote, citing potential strain on business and a crappy economy.

In a political climate in which even the extension of jobless benefits is controversial, national legislation on paid sick leave is unlikely to make much headway. So some of the country’s most liberal jurisdictions have been pushing forward on their own. In 2007, San Francisco became the first city to pass a law requiring employers to provide the benefit, inspiring similar laws in Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Connecticut, and proposed measures in over a dozen other states.

New York’s version of the paid sick leave law would force firms with 5 to 19 employees to give workers five paid sick days a year. Firms with 20 or more employees would have to offer nine days. Right now, over a million workers in one of the richest cities in the world don’t get paid if they have to take a sick day.

Although business leaders like Rupert Murdoch have criticized the idea of paid sick leave as “absurd,” 14 of the 15 wealthiest and most productive countries guarantee their citizens continued income when they’re ill, according to a 2009 study by the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy. So do about 160 other countries. It all makes the US, where more than 40 million people go without paid sick leave, look positively medieval:

Source: McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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