Filed under: news
You’re in good company.
In California, 40% of the workforce (around 6 million people) do not have the right to a paid sick day.
For maybe five times in the last 15 years, Manuela Mendez has had to drag herself to work at a fast-food restaurant in La Mirada, coughing and congested.
“I go to work because we need the money,” she said in Spanish. “It’s difficult to work. I carry microbes that contaminate my work mates, and that’s a problem for the customers.”
The 40-year-old mother of two does not think it is fair that she and an estimated 6 million California workers — about 40% of the state workforce — do not have the right to take a day of paid sick leave to recuperate from an illness or injury, see a doctor or care for a family member who is ill.
Mendez, an activist with the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is part of a broad coalition that includes labor unions, health advocates and women’s groups backing a bill that would give all employees in the state at least five paid sick days a year.
The bill is expected to be vetoed by the governor, who consistently sides with the California Chamber of Commerce, and business lobbyists.
Unfortunately it’s more than a legislative problem, in white collar jobs and beyond it’s also one of general attitudes that has its equivalent in the large percentage of of people who do get paid vacations but do not take them. To clarify, only about 65 of workers are entitled to paid vacations in this capitalist dungeon, also known as “America, we’re Number One!”. Of those 65 percent, another large block does not dare to take off for fear of “volunteering” for the next round of layoffs.
Comment by Martin Voelker 07.05.08 @ 9:20 pmAnd as for sick people dragging themselves to work: just wait til the next flu pandemic, like the one in 1918, that’ll teach us real fast - but late.
Either I’ve been very fortunate or have no work ethic; my former employer gave us five weeks a year, and I’d use it all up on vacations and sick days; rarely carrying over unused days for more than a year. I knew people who never took a sick day out of some sense of martyrdom, or would come in hacking and coughing and irritating everyone else (in large part everyone did get at least 2 or 3 weeks a year).
It just baffles me that there are people who don’t get any paid sick days. I mean, what the h-e-double hockey sticks?
Comment by h sofia 07.06.08 @ 7:09 pmLeave a comment
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