UPDATE: This afternoon, Monica Guzman, the PI's online reporter, blogs on the story mentioned below, asking her readers "Should Washington mandate paid sick days?" Guzman's summary says "We did just pass a law making sure employers pay workers who are out taking care of brand new kids." We did? She might mean 2007's unfunded, unimplemented paid family leave law but it is important to note that law purports to provide paid family leave through a state-run social insurance program. Its mandate is that employers make due with the absent employee for six weeks; thus far, the employer doesn't have to pay (directly) for it.
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The Seattle PI today runs an AP story out of Connecticut on the push by a handful of states and the federal government to mandate employers provide a minimum number of paid days off to employees.
Senator Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, who incidentally sponsored the state's so-far unfunded, unimplemented paid family leave mandate, floated this idea a couple years ago but it didn't get very far. The bill's purported purpose was to protect workplaces from workers down sick with the Avian flu. But the predicted pandemic never happened (knock on wood).
The proposal could be back next year in Washington. In her Everett Herald column yesterday, paid leave advocate Marilyn Watkins laid the familiar rhetorical foundation:
The last few years have seen the beginnings of change, with Washington and New Jersey joining California in adopting paid family leave, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., passing minimum sick days ordinances, and similar bills introduced in other states and Congress.
We still have a long way to go, in our state and nationally.
Not so fast. Advocates ought to wait and see what happens in Ohio this fall, where an SEIU-led ballot measure on mandated paid leave is before the voters. Just today, it was announced that Democratic governor Ted Strickland came out opposed to the measure, claiming the initiative is "unworkable, unwieldy and would be detrimental to Ohio's economy."
