A million workers with no sick leave

By Marilyn Watkins, Ph. D.

Megan, a server at a Tacoma restaurant, was fired because she had the flu. When she tried to call in sick, her supervisor told her the restaurant was busy and she had to come in. When she did, one of her customers complained to the health department. Three weeks later, Megan was fired. Now she works at a bar – and still doesn’t have sick leave.

Stories like Megan’s are all too common. While many union members and white collar employees enjoy benefits, 42% of the workforce – 190,000 workers in Seattle and more than one million in Washington State – do not have any paid sick days. Only 12% of restaurants provide sick leave to full-time employees, and only 4% to part-timers. Low-wage workers are the least likely to receive benefits, the least able to afford unpaid time off, and the most vulnerable to retaliation if forced to miss work.

Even some workers who in theory have sick leave are strongly discouraged from using it. For example, many grocery and hospital employees don’t get paid leave until the third day they are out – and they get demerits for every day they call in sick.

In times of pandemics like H1N1, the lack of across-the-board standards for paid sick days is a clear public health problem. But we’re all at risk when workers who handle our food and care for the most vulnerable are forced to be on the job sick with any communicable disease.

Studies show that children recover more quickly from illness and do better in school when their parents have paid leave. Ailing seniors suffer when their working adult children can’t use paid sick days to care for them and help them get to the doctor.

Three U.S. cities have led the way in adopting minimum standards for paid sick days. San Francisco and Milwaukee passed initiatives with 61% and 69% of the vote, respectively, and Washington, D.C.’s council adopted a similar statute. Coalitions across the country have introduced bills in city councils and state legislatures, The Healthy Families Act, now before Congress, would establish a national standard.

More than three years’ experience in San Francisco has shown that businesses as well as families prosper when employers are required to provide paid sick days. In San Francisco all employees must accrue at least an hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours for the very smallest companies and up to 72 hours in firms with at least 10 employees. That results in higher morale, less spread of disease among coworkers, and better customer satisfaction. Jobs – including restaurant jobs – grew faster in San Francisco than in the surrounding counties or state as a whole in the two years following adoption of paid sick days. Jobs shrank less in that city during the deep recession year of 2009.

The Seattle Coalition for a Healthy Workforce is working to make Seattle the next city to adopt paid sick days. The Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans has joined with other labor, senior, women’s, faith, employer, and community groups to endorse the campaign. A similar coalition, Healthy Tacoma, is organizing in our sister city.

Contact Lily at 206-465-4835 or lilymadeline@yahoo.com for more information – and to get involved. No one should be fired for having the flu. No one should have to risk being fired for taking their mother to the doctor.

(Marilyn Watkins is Policy Director with the Economic Opportunity Institute.)

Initiative 1070

Initiative 1070 would raise a billion in new revenues

An initiative that would raise a billion dollars in new revenue while providing significant tax relief to the state’s home owners and small businesses is being circulated for signatures to secure a place on the November ballot.

The initiative is the work of Seattle’s Economic Opportunity Institute, whose credo is: “Building an economy that works. For everyone.”

Initiative 1070 would levy an excise tax on income in excess of $200,000 for one individual and $400,000 for joint filers. This tax would net $1,687 million in new revenue, offset in part by a one-fifth reduction in the state property tax and an increase in small business credit to $4,800 per year.

Savings from the property tax cut could range from $61 in Skykomish to $178 in Seattle.

The estimated net new annual revenue of $1,069 million would be placed in a trust fund dedicated to improving education and health services.

Seventy percent of the net new revenue would be placed in a Student Achievement Fund, to be distributed to the state’s hard-pressed school districts to be used to improve student achievement through class size reduction, extended learning opportunities and pre-kindergarten, or to fund construction associated with these objectives.

The remaining 30% would be used to strengthen the Basic Health Plan, public health services and long-term care service for seniors and persons with disabilities.

Approval of I-1070 at the polls would mark an historic breakthrough for tax fairness advocates, who have worked in vain for decades to change the highly regressive character of the state’s tax system.

The Executive Board of the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans will have before it at its April 20 meeting a recommendation that I-1070 be formally endorsed and that the membership be urged to engage actively in the campaign to acquire the necessary signatures.

New revenue would save jobs

By Rap Lewis
Last year’s deep cuts in the state budget cost the state’s work force an estimated 44,000 private and public sector jobs. Further cuts could eliminate as many as 33,600 more.
The estimates are those of the Economic Opportunity Institute (EOI), the Seattle-based public policy research center.
In contrast, EOI reports, “a combination of new state taxes and federal aid to fill the state’s budget gap could save up to 33,000 jobs.”
EOI cites the estimate of economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com that every dollar of state spending generates $1.41 of economic activity. Private sector businesses benefit from expanded state purchases from suppliers and service providers, as well as from the added dollars workers with a regular paycheck are able to spend.
Restoring public sector jobs also sustains the important public services these workers perform, from park maintenance to help for the mentally ill.
To raise the essential revenue, EOI Policy Director Marilyn Watkins says the legislature should first tax profitable multi-state or multinational businesses, keeping money in this state that otherwise would have been spent elsewhere.
Then, Watkins says, legislators should extend the sales tax to those services used primarily by wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.
In the search for revenue, Watkins also calls for close scrutiny of business tax breaks.
“From 1994 to 2008, the Washington legislature passed 185 such special tax exemptions that now costs the state $2.5 billion in every biennial budget,” she notes.

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