DeLauro Leads Rally Supporting Paid Sick Leave Bill

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro joined restaurant employees and representatives from the Connecticut Working Families Party Wednesday for a rally to support a bill that would make it mandatory for Connecticut businesses with 50 or more workers to provide paid sick time.

"The time is now to be able to do this," said DeLauro at the rally held in front of a Friendly’s restaurant in West Haven.

Working Families Party Executive Director Jon Green said they chose to have the rally at Friendly's because the restaurant chain is an example of a food service industry employer that does not offer paid sick days for its employees.

All too often, said Green and DeLauro, food service employees come to work when they are sick rather than go without pay, although that spreads infection to customers and other employees and results in lower productivity for the business.

The rally was timed to attract support for the paid sick leave bill, which is headed for the state Senate in Hartford following its approval by the judiciary committee on Tuesday. 

The bill requires businesses in the state with 50 or more employees to give full-time and part-time workers an hour of paid sick time for every 40 hours they worked, up to a maximum of one week’s pay per year.

Since 2004, DeLauro has introduced national legislation with similar provisions in Congress. If this bill were to be made into law, it would put Connecticut on the map as the first state in the nation to mandate paid sick leave. California legislation is also taking steps in that direction.  

DeLauro and Green addressed criticism by pro-business opponents that the bill was a "job killer" that would only make Connecticut less business-friendly.

They said an economic study showed that not giving employees paid sick time costs American businesses $180 billion a year in reduced productivity, which is higher than what sick time would cost.

Nationally, they said, 85 percent of food service industry workers do not have paid sick leave, which means those who prepare and serve food are more likely to do it while they are sick with colds, the flu or other infectious illnesses.

DeLauro said 86 percent of Americans support laws mandating paid sick days for workers.

A group of Working Families supporters, including restaurant employees, gathered behind the speakers and held signs advocating the paid sick leave bill.

Andrea Penta of New Britain, a part-time direct care employee at a group home for people with disabilities, said the law would help her. Her job doesn’t offer paid sick leave, so if she is ill she either goes to work or does not get paid.

"I just can’t lose that pay," she said.

Darlene Herrick of West Hartford said she worries that her child’s school bus driver does not have paid sick leave benefits, and the driver might come in sick and spread his illness or have an accident.

The lack of paid sick leave for food service employees is also a public health problem. Green referred to an article in the Journal of Food Protection that said 11 percent of restaurant workers during the previous year came to work sick with symptoms that included vomiting and diarrhea.

DeLauro noted during the H1N1 swine flu scare, government epidemiologists warned people not to go to work if they catch the flu because that would spread it faster.

She added that it was easy for those government doctors to say that because they had paid sick leave benefits.

Nine out of ten employees in the top 10 percent of the nation's income get paid sick leave benefits, but four out of five employees in the bottom 10 percent do not, said the congresswoman.

"People should not have to give up their jobs or give up their families because they get sick," DeLauro said. "Public policy needs to make a difference in what people’s lives are all about."

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