Guys, this is not okay. Connecticut is the one state in the country that has passed a paid sick leave law, but such laws are spreading in major cities. Yet Connecticut's Senate has passed a bill that would weaken the state's sick leave law, and the House is considering it.
According to Family Values at Work, the business-backed S.B. 1007 would:
(1) Cut out workers in every job in the manufacturing industry at all facilities. [...] A manufacturer with administrative and production facilities in separate locations is now required to provide paid sick days at the administrative facility, but not the production one. This bill would exempt manufacturers entirely as long as their business falls under NAICS’s manufacturing categories, regardless of the activities they conduct at different facilities. The result: some workers who currently earn paid sick days would lose that protection. Workers who serve particular functions (clerical, administrative, etc.) in one industry would be treated differently than workers with the same job responsibilities in another industry. [...]
(2) (2) Give incentive to become a “small employer for a week” to evade the law and prohibit workers from earning sick time. The current law requires that service workers earn paid sick days if the business they work for employs at least 50 people in Connecticut during any quarter of the previous year. This bill proposes to substitute a single, specific week – the first week in October – as the time period for determining an employer’s size. An employer who employs more than 50 people most of the year could slash their staff for one week in October and claim not to meet the threshold. The potential for employer abuse is enormous.
(3) Add to scheduling instability. Under current law, employees accrue one hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked per calendar year. Under this bill, they would accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours they are scheduled to work in a week during the 365-day year their employer designates. [...] It would encourage employers to post schedules at the very last minute and to utilize unscheduled work arrangements; employees of the most abusive employers with the worst scheduling practices would have the most to lose and the least ability to earn sick days, regardless of the number of hours they actually work, letting “bad apple” employers reap the benefits.
(4) Make people use more time than they need, hurting themselves and their co-workers. Current law permits workers to use leave in one-hour increments, the same rate at which they may accrue such leave. This bill would give employers the power to force workers to take more time than they need by allowing employers to require workers to take an entire shift.
Connecticut's law should be a model for the country, not something to be walked back, dragging the United States even further behind most of the rest of the world.
(Via ThinkProgress)