ALEC wants to force this guy to go to work.
Serving you food.
, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Connecticut have all passed paid sick leave laws;
Philadelphia is waiting to hear if its mayor will veto a sick leave bill passed by the city council, as he has done once before.
There's another city that passed paid sick leave: Milwaukee, by overwhelming popular vote on a referendum, only to have it overridden by Gov. Scott Walker and his allies passing a state law that preempted it. Now, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC; see here and here) is planning to use that as a model to overturn paid sick leave laws passed elsewhere—like, say, Seattle or Philadelphia.
The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch reports:
According to materials obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, paid sick leave was a hot topic on this year's agenda of corporations and their allied politicians. "Paid family medical leave" was the only topic of discussion by the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force, according to the meeting minutes.
Meeting attendees were given complete copies of Wisconsin's 2011 Senate Bill 23 (now Wisconsin Act 16), as a model for state override. They were also handed a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies prepared by ALEC member, the National Restaurant Association. [...]
Not surprisingly, ALEC's Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee is co-chaired by YUM! Brands, Inc., which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Fast food companies have fought paid sick leave across the country.
Because fast food companies want you to be served food that comes with a solid dose of the flu, if it means saving a little money on paid sick leave. Just as they want to be able to fire workers for staying home for a couple days to get over the flu or take care of a sick child.
So if you live in a state where a city has passed paid sick leave, keep an eye out for this to make its way from ALEC model legislation to a bill submitted by one of your state legislators.
