Balancing Work and Family

Last week, the Connecticut House approved legislation to guarantee paid sick days off for employees in any business with fifty or more employees.  While the Senate adjourned the regular session without voting on the bill, a special budget session to be convened might have a chance to enact the bill.

This Dispatch will discuss how funding from the federal recovery plan can help offset the costs of maintaining and even expanding early education programs. This Dispatch will also highlight the economic and educational benefits of supporting early education programs, as well as the different methods that state governments are employing to help reduce the cost of and promote the expansion of quality early child care and state pre-k programs.

Even as Planned Parenthood, MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation team up in a campaign to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STD), state legislatures are acting to ensure students' access to comprehensive sex education and are rejecting federal funding for failed abstinence-only programs. Half of all sexually active people will have an STD by the age of 25 with 19 million new STD cases occurring each year. These statistics highlight the need for improving youth sex education.

Fifteen states have introduced paid sick days legislation to ensure that workers are able to regain their health without losing pay, or even worse, their jobs.  These are based on model policies that have already passed in San Francisco, CA, Milwaukee, WI and Washington, DC.

State Sen. Ray Cleary, a South Carolina Republican, has proposed S.286 to create a free dental screening program for schoolchildren in at least 3 of the state's poorest counties - where children are most likely to go without regular dental care. Sen. Cleary, a dentist himself, wants to combat the adverse effects that poor dental health has on a child's education, including the inability to focus while in school because of pain and missed school days. According to the Pew Center on the States, tooth decay is the most common childhood disease, affecting 60% of all children and causing kids across the country to miss 51 million hours of school time each year.

7 states are suing the federal government to stop a last minute rule by former President Bush that pre-empts state laws guaranteeing women's access to reproductive services, including abortion and emergency contraception. The so-called "provider conscience regulation" became effective on Tuesday shortly after President Obama's swearing-in and allows health care workers who object to abortion and contraception to deny women care.  This pre-empts state laws designed to ensure access to necessary reproductive care and threatens womens' health, as detailed by the National Women's Law Center.

One key victory on election day was a victory for paid sick days in Milwaukee by a commanding 69-31% of city voters.  Parents in Milwaukee who need to take a day off to care for a sick child can now afford to do so now that their paid sick days referendum has Milwaukee following the lead of San Francisco, CA and Washington DC. in adopting a program to require employers to provide paid sick days.  Under the measure, full-time workers in large businesses will earn up to 9 paid sick days a year and workers in smaller businesses with fewer than 10 employees will earn up to 5 days a year.

There are stark differences between the two presidential campaigns' approaches to federal-state relationships.  Differences range from the amount of funding appropriated for programs run by the states to whether the candidates would strengthen or weaken state regulatory authority.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Fed and Treasury officials have identified the disease. It's called de-leveraging, or the unwinding of debt. During the credit boom, financial institutions and American households took on too much debt."  But let's not buy into a false equivalence of "financial institutions" and those "American households" borrowing beyond their means.

Milwaukee has a paid sick leave referendum on the ballot for November that would allow employees to take leave for medical treatment, preventive care, or diagnosis for themselves, as well as to care for a close family member who is sick or who needs diagnosis or preventive care. Additionally, employees would be allowed to use the time to deal with domestic violence or sexual assault (for example, using accrued time to flee to safety.)  Employees at firms with 10 workers or less could accumulate up to 40 hours, whereas larger companies would have to provide up to 72 hours of paid sick leave.