Paid sick leave continued to gain ground in the states in 2018, even as congressional Republicans continue to stand in the way of the United States joining most of the rest of the world in requiring that workers can take the day off when they get sick.
Maryland workers got paid sick leave after the state legislature overrode a veto by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan. New Jersey, in the post-Christie era, also passed a sick leave law. They became the ninth and 10th states with paid sick leave, joining Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.
Then there’s Michigan. In Michigan, with a paid sick leave measure headed for a ballot vote, Republicans passed a similar law to keep the issue off the ballot, allowing themselves to then gut the law in a lame duck session.
Austin, Texas, is another giant asterisk on the year in paid sick leave. The city passed an ordinance, only to have corporate interest groups take it to court and get the law blocked. As if that’s not enough, Republicans in the state legislature have talked about passing a pre-emption law banning cities from passing such laws.
Turning from paid sick leave to paid family leave, Massachusetts passed paid family and medical leave.
It’s past time for the U.S. to join the rest of the world in letting sick workers stay home—both to recover and to stifle the spread of contagious maladies—but as long as Republicans are in a place to block it, they will. The states are where workers will get basic rights for the time being, but as Michigan and Texas show, state-level Republicans are also eager to hurt working people.