CORPORATE AMERICA is giving workers a cruel choice: your job or your health.
Currently, four out of 10 private-sector workers don’t have a singe day of paid sick leave on the job. And if Corporate America gets its way, that number will only increase, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
In 10 states so far, legislators are pushing through bans on city or county governments providing paid sick leave for workers. The bans, passed in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin, are designed to act preemptively, blocking sick leave legislation from even coming to a vote.
… Some 12 percent of workers surveyed said that they or a family member have been fired, suspended or otherwise punished for taking time off for an illness, 16 percent said they’d lost a job, and 14 percent indicated that they were told that they would lose their job if they took time off for a personal or family illness.