Last night the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance that requires businesses that employ 5 to 49 workers at least five paid sick days. Employers with 50 to 249 employees must provide seven; those with more than 250 workers must provide nine paid days off.
Seattle joins San Francisco, Connecticut and Washington, D.C., in passing a paid sick leave requirement.
Our brothers and sisters at Local 117 in Tukwila, Wash., helped make the new ordinance a reality. Tracey Thompson, secretary-treasurer of Local 117, writes:
Teamsters Local 117 has worked with other unions and community groups to achieve a historic victory for working people in Seattle today: Passage of a new city ordinance that will provide paid sick leave for Seattle workers.
Congratulations to all of the Teamsters and other labor supporters who worked so hard to make this victory possible!The Seattle Coalition for a Healthy Workforce explains why paid sick leave is so important:
■Food safety: One in four grocery workers report coming to work sick because they don’t have paid sick days, and 78% of accommodation and food service workers don’t earn paid sick days.
■Disease prevention: 55% of retail workers and 29% in health care don’t have sick leave.
■Children's health: For 28% of school-age children in Seattle – 13,000 students – all parents work jobs that do not provide paid sick days. Parents without sick leave are less likely to stay home with an ill child, sometimes being forced to send a sick child to school, or keep an older child home from school to watch a sibling.
