Balancing Work and Family

86% of the public favors legislation that would mandate seven paid sick days per year for all employers, according to study sponsored by the Public Welfare Fund in collaboration with the National Partnership of Women and Families. Even when the public is asked about mandating nine paid sick days per year, 71% still support the proposed legislation. The study found that paid sick days legislation enjoys deep public support across all demographics and political leanings, including large majorities of Republicans as well as Democrats.

On June 1, the New York Senate put the state in position to be first in the nation to enact a Domestic Workers' Rights law (S2311) by a vote of 33-28.  The New York Assembly led the way in June 2009 when it passed its own version of the bill (A1470).  This groundbreaking legislation will extend core labor rights, from fair labor standards to paid sick days, to creating a framework for collective bargaining, to domestic workers.  This will include those employed to work in a private home to perform housekeeping and/or to care for children, the infirm, or the elderly.

Recent laws in Nebraska and Oklahoma highlight how a number of right-wing state leaders are attacking women's reproductive freedom.  These bills range from replacing the viability standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court, to forcing women to watch an ultrasound as their doctors explain the status of the fetus, to precluding women from suing their doctors if the latter misinforms women of the well-being of their fetuses.

As part of our multi-state shared agenda, the Progressive States Network is working with its partners and leading experts to promote paid sick days reforms in states across the country. These reforms will allow parents to take care of sick children and workers to be more productive, while protecting the overall public health and preventing transmission of diseases within the workplace.  Fully 86% of the public in polling by the Public Welfare Foundation in 2008 supported enacting laws that guarantee paid sick days for all workers

In a significant decision last month, an Oklahoma County District Court ruled that a 2008 anti-choice law violated the state constitution.  The law in question (SB 1878) was more burdensome than any prior bill regulating pre-abortion ultrasounds passed in the country, requiring women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a doctor describe fetal characteristics before consenting to the procedure.  Opponents argued that the law invades a woman's right to privacy and violates doctors' freedom of speech.

Here's one way states can lower health care costs: reduce the most commonly performed surgery, namely Cesarean sections, or C-sections, to deliver babies -- roughly half of which are performed unnecessarily.

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 discusshow funding from the federal recovery plan can help offset the costs ofmaintaining and even expanding early education programs. This Dispatchwill also highlight the economic and educational benefits of supportingearly education programs, as well as the different methods that stategovernments are employing to help reduce the cost of and promote theexpansion 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.