Maryland Workers Need Paid Sick Leave

The Working Matters coalition (MBTPI is a member) will be holding a press conference/rally on Thursday in Annapolis to announce the official filing of the Earned Sick and Safe Time Act, a bill to allow workers to earn a limited number of annual paid sick days from their employer.


Paid Sick Days Press Conference
Thursday, January 31, starting at 11:00 AM
Senate Office Building – East Wing Conference Room
11 Bladen Street, Annapolis

For more information or to RSVP, please contact Melissa Broome at (410) 236-6079 or melissa@jotf.org 

As for why MBTPI supports the Earned Sick and Safe Time Act, well...

Everyone gets sick and everyone deserves the opportunity to recover without risking their economic security, or the health of others. Yet more than 700,000 Marylanders are unable to earn paid sick days. This often means they go to work sick, send sick children to school or daycare, or - in the worst situations - lose their job because they cannot come to work.

Working Women Need Paid Sick Days

• In every corner of Maryland, women care for their families and also bring home a significant share of their household income.
• Two-thirds of all family caregivers are female, yet women-dominated industries are among the least likely to offer paid sick days.
• Forty-three percent of women working in the private sector are unable to take a single paid sick day.
• Twenty percent of women with children in the private sector are unable to take a single paid sick day.
• Nearly one in four American women report physical or sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. Paid safe days protect the paychecks and jobs of victims of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault when they need time off to seek assistance.

Paid Sick Days Protect Families

• Children inevitably get sick and they get better faster when their parents care for them. Parents without paid sick days are more than twice as likely as parents with paid sick days to send a sick child to school or day care. They are also five times more likely to report taking their child or a family member to the emergency room because they were unable to take time off work during normal work hours.
• For the typical family without paid sick days, just 3.5 sick days without pay is equivalent to losing an entire month of groceries. For single-parent families, which are often headed by women, the situation is even worse.

Paid Sick Days Improve Public Health

• Workers without paid sick days are more likely to go to work sick, and more likely to delay needed medical care, leading to prolonged illness and costly health problems.
• Between September and November 2009 – the H1N1 flu pandemic’s peak months – 8 million workers went to work sick, and may have infected 7 million of their coworkers.

Paid Sick Days Benefit Businesses

• Paid sick days benefit employers by reducing turnover.
• Workplaces are healthier when sick workers are able to stay home. The spread of disease slows, workplace injuries decrease, and workplaces are both healthier and more productive.
• “Presenteeism” or workers under-performing because of illness, is estimated to cost employers $160 billion per year—twice as much as the cost of absenteeism.
• Workers with paid sick days are 28 percent less likely than workers without leave to be injured on the job, according to the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health.
• Adults without paid sick days are 1.5 times more likely to report going to work with a contagious illness.

If you  or your organization wants to join MBTPI and the other members of the Working Matters coalition, click here.