Brown signs law giving millions of Californians paid sick leave

Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA)

Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA)

The United States may lag behind the rest of the developed world on sick leave, but a second American state is catching up. California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a law giving most of the state's workers three paid sick days a year, starting July 1, 2015:

Assembly Bill 1522, authored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, is expected to affect more than 6.5 million employees who have no paid sick days. That’s roughly 40 percent of the workforce in the state.

Though three days a year isn't much, the California law applies to more of the state's workers than does Connecticut's sick leave law, which exempts manufacturers and businesses with fewer than 50 workers. A growing number of American cities have also passed paid sick leave laws, with East Orange and Passaic, New Jersey, recently joining the list; Massachusetts voters will have the chance to decide on a sick leave measure on November's ballot. As a result, the U.S. is increasingly a patchwork of paid sick leave laws—which is confusing, but a lot better than a monotone of no sick leave anywhere in the country.