With the healthcare debate turning on the obscenity of Stupak's amendment and whether or not the Senate will make a flawed bill worse or block reform altogether, there's another effort attacking the idea of making life for ordinary Americans something besides a race to the bottom.
There's a proposal circulating to mandate paid sick leave (the Healthy Family Act) so that employers give their workers a better choice than either going to work sick or staying home and starving. Sure as spring rain and toadstools popping up afterwards, the astroturfers are already at work on this.
A letter appeared in the Albany Times Union today, 11-16-09 warning that such a mandate will only increase unemployment. Guess who's behind it. (answer after the jump.)
If you followed the link above, you would have seen a letter from something called the Employment Policies Institute and a person named Kristen Lopez Eastlick arguing:
Especially with the federal unemployment rate increasing 54 percent from September 2008 to September 2009, the push to mandate paid sick leave is thoroughly misguided ("Sick pay helps families," Nov. 3). Forcing employers -- a majority of whom already have sick leave policies in place -- to commit to this time off will hurt the very employees this mandate purports to help.
The letter makes some vague assertions about costs and studies showing that such policies hurt low wage workers and warns that we should be worrying about creating job growth rather than creating "barriers to entry-level employment, especially for the nation's most vulnerable workers."
It almost sounds reasonable - unless you do a little digging. The institute? Turns out it's a front group created by Richard Berman. Sourcewatch has some details on its history. Basically, its another one of many front groups created by Berman to fight pro-labor proposals, funded largely by companies that use low wage workers.
Oh, and the article referenced in the letter (but not linked on the TU web page - I added that above)? It's here. It makes you appreciate just how smarmy the EPI letter really is, when you read what happened to someone who really needed sick leave.
There may be questions about the existence of God, but there's no question that there is evil in the world.