Archive for the 'Low Wage' Category

Sick in the City

Julie Schwartz Weber November 11th, 2009

The Community Service Society of New York (CSS) and A Better Balance (ABB) just released a report entitled “Sick in the City: What Lack of Paid Leave Means for Working New Yorkers.”  This report concerns the importance of paid leave, particularly in light of the recent H1N1 outbreak.  In this report, authors Jeremy Reiss (CSS) and Nancy Rankin (ABB) analyze 8 years of data extracted from annual surveys concerning lack of paid sick leave for working New Yorkers, outline economic and public health arguments in support of paid sick leave legislation, and conclude with a call to pass paid sick leave legislation.  Highlights from their report include the following:

  1. Nearly half (48%) of working New Yorkers do not receive paid sick days, while 44% receive no paid vacation.  A full 39%–or 1.3 million workers in New York City–receive no paid leave (sick or vacation).
    • 66% of low-income workers in New York City lack paid sick leave, with Latinos faring the worst; more than 7 out of 10 Latinos lack paid sick leave.
    • 60% of low-income working moms in New York City lack paid sick leave for themselves and for their children.
  2. Availability of paid sick leave is declining across income spectrums.
    • Where 56% of the near-poor had paid sick leave in 2007, only 33% have it in 2009.
    • Where 82% of moderate to high-income workers had it in 2004, only 63% have it in 2009.
  3. Workers in unions are more likely to receive paid sick leave; 64% of those in union jobs have paid sick days versus 48% of those in non-union jobs.

  4. Workers in small businesses in New York City are the least likely to receive paid sick leave; nearly two-thirds of those in businesses with 10 or fewer employees lack paid sick leave.  The authors underscore that these small businesses hire over 26% of all New Yorkers.

  5. Workers in the service sectors, construction and manufacturing are the least likely to receive paid sick leave, with a full 68% of working New Yorkers lacking paid sick leave in the leisure, hospitality, retail and wholesale areas.

  6. When no paid sick leave is provided, low-income workers who take time off to care for themselves or a sick child are more likely to be threatened with retaliation in the form of docked pay, job loss, or suspension.

  7. The lack of paid sick leave results in public health consequences, including the spread of contagious illnesses, like H1N1, and higher health care costs. Low-income workers without paid sick leave are more likely to go to work sick, and more likely to rely on emergency room visits to tend to routine medical issues. Even when these workers have health insurance coverage, the ER provides care outside of work hours and does not jeopardize job security.

  8. Most New Yorkers, across income and political party lines, support the passage of a paid sick law.

For more information on paid sick days, generally, visit our mini-brief and topic page on the matter.

The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

Featured Guest Blogger March 4th, 2009

Yolanda Wu is Co-President and Co-Founder of A Better Balance: The Work & Family Legal Center, a legal advocacy organization based in New York City. A Better Balance engages the government, the private sector, and individuals to create family-friendly law and policy. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

During these hard economic times, household workers report that abuses are increasing as their employers face strain in their own lives. Nannies are facing lay-offs without severance or other protections. Housecleaners are suffering unjust firings or wage cuts. Many household workers have been given additional responsibilities for the same pay.

Fortunately, a dedicated group of domestic workers and their allies are organizing to make things better. Last month, over 250 people went to Albany to urge legislators to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (A1470/S2311). Nannies, housecleaners, eldercare providers, and their supporters from employer groups, labor unions, religious organizations, and schools held more than 60 meetings with legislators.

The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights would provide comprehensive workplace rights and standards such as paid vacation and sick time, an annual cost of living adjustment, one day of rest per week, notice of termination and severance, and health insurance coverage. It recently passed the New York State Assembly Labor Committee by a vote of 25 to 1, and has been introduced in the Senate. Another lobby day is planned for April to keep up the pressure.

The financial crisis highlights the urgent need for action on the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Nannies and other household workers, who number 200,000 in New York City alone, play a huge role in supporting families and our economy. These vulnerable workers deserve basic labor standards and protection.

It’s heartening that many employers of domestic workers, including the over 70 members of the Employers for Justice Network who traveled to Albany, support the passage of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights. These employers support this bill because they want guidance and standards. What would it take to persuade more employers of domestic workers to join the effort?

To learn more:

  • Domestic Workers United & Datacenter. (2006). Home is where the work is: Inside New York’s domestic work industry. Retrieved from http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/media/files/6/homeiswheretheworkis.pdf
  • National Employment Law Project. (2008). Testimony of Annette Bernhardt. Hearing before the New York State Assembly Committee on Labor. The conditions surrounding domestic employment in New York State. Retrieved from http://nelp.3cdn.net/2382ec8c4a6bd5fc89_tym6b547y.pdf

The Weather Outside is Frightful: Winter Storms and Work-Family

Judi Casey January 14th, 2009

Recently, we’ve had several winter storms in New England. Most of them are the usual snow dumps that close schools for the day and make driving difficult, if not treacherous. These situations can be challenging for working parents, as they are unexpected and there are few options for childcare if one must get to work. Parents often look for care from relatives or family members, neighbors or friends, babysitters, or, if possible, stay at home for the day. Most of the time, this is a one day affair, and with a little bit of luck and ingenuity, a solution is found–although low-wage earners or service employees may find it more problematic to locate alternatives.

On December 12, an ice storm in New Hampshire left 400,000 residents without power, and a state of emergency was declared. Three days later, 164,000 customers were without power, and twelve days later, 9,000 people still didn’t have power. Many had to go to local shelters to stay warm, get a meal or drink of water, or to take a shower. Schools were closed, driving was impossible, and meeting even basic needs was a challenge.

I heard a woman interviewed on the radio who was understandably frazzled and overwhelmed.  She was supposed to be at work, but her kids didn’t have any school. She had already asked family and friends to help her for the first week, but the good will was wearing thin. She was sleeping at a friend’s house, as she did not have power.  As a result, even getting ready for work was a challenge, if she could figure out a childcare option.  Finally, driving conditions seemed somewhat daunting to her with tree limbs in the road and on power lines.

Living in New England, I guess we expect short-term interruptions to our normal work-family schedules due to winter weather, but we may be unprepared for longer term situations. Back-up care can be helpful, but may not be available, and usually requires pre-registration.  Although a significant storm, this was not a dire situation like Hurricanes Rita or Katrina, as there was the assumption that everything would go back to normal in a short time period –however, there were kids who did not go to school on December 12 and first returned after school vacation on January 5, 2009!

What’s a working parent to do? What if your child has no school for a week or longer, but your employer is open and expects you to be at work? What if you work for a public safety or service organization that requires you to work more hours than scheduled to meet coverage needs in an emergency? What if you can’t even stay in your home to wash your uniform or take care of basic personal hygiene?

How do you manage dependent care in an unexpected weather situation? Let us know by answering the poll on our blog or home page.

Working…and Poor

Featured Guest Blogger August 1st, 2008

Last year I had the privilege of being a teaching assistant for Lisa Dodson in the Sociology department here at Boston College. The course was titled, “From Poor Laws to Working Poor: The world of low-income America.” Lisa was an incredible mentor not only to her students, but also to me.

Being in the work-family field, I am often inundated (happily so) with research, conversation, and policies surrounding flexible schedules, telework, employer-sponsored child care, and other family-friendly topics. Arguably, some of these topics may be more relevant to middle- and upper-class workers than the working poor. In my time with Lisa, I found myself so excited to be immersed in the course materials and her stories of her work with low-income individuals, as low-income working families were one of the primary reasons I sought my MSW a few years prior. I felt like I was going back to my roots.

So, I would like to share a couple of online resources with you on the topic. In terms of literature, I have to draw everyone’s (okay, the readers of this blog’s…) attention to the Urban Institute’s Low-income Working Families Project. They have an entire webpage dedicated to recent reports on topics ranging from job loss, to getting ahead and health insurance.

Recently, I also came across the Working Poor Families Project (WPFP), which supports the efforts of state nonprofit organizations to strengthen state policies that can assist low-income workers to achieve economic security and become produc¬tive participants in the economy. Here are some interesting facts that they report:

• One in four working families is low-income.
• Forty percent of minority working families are low-income, twice the percentage of white working families.
• Of all children in working families, one third are in low-income working families.
• A married couple heads more than half of low-income working families.

On the Network, we have statistics, definitions, encyclopedia entries, links, and plenty of reading on the working poor.

Feel free to let us know of any other resources that we can share here around the ‘blog table.’ We all know someone who is working, and poor. As scholars, policymakers, business leaders, and members of society, let’s pay attention to this issue.

Parental Incentive Program

Featured Guest Blogger July 18th, 2008

Thank you to Tiffany Gabrielson, Boston College Law Student and Sloan Network Research Assistant, for today’s guest blog entry.

Over a year after it was established, the eyes of the world are still on a privately funded New York program that offers financial incentives to impoverished parents. The controversial program is aimed at families in the poorest New York neighborhoods and can only be used by families whose income falls well below the poverty line. Through privately collected funds, parents are offered yearly payments of up to $5,000 for assisting their children in receiving the educational and medical assistance that all children need. The money is earned in increments, depending upon what task is performed. Rewards are given for school performance, such as children who receive high scores on standardized tests or have exemplary school attendance records and for proper medical and dental attention.

The program is inevitably praised by some and condemned by others. Opponents argue that such incentives serve to reward parents for performing tasks that they are already morally obligated to do, tasks which many of the parents were doing anyway. However, these programs are not merely meant to spur parents into action. They are also designed to increase children’s access to the educational and medical help that they so desperately need. To even qualify for this program, a family must have a financial situation that falls so far below the poverty line that the cost of transportation alone to a school, dentist’s office, or hospital can sometimes be unmanageable. A parent should not have to choose between spending his last few dollars of the month on bus fare to attend a student-teacher conference and spending it on bread to feed his family. By providing this incentive program, perhaps New York has found a way to make both choices feasible.

Because this program is still in its infancy, it might be difficult to see just how effective it truly is, especially before the trial ends in September of 2009. While many already argue that the cost of the program will be more then recouped in the amount the government will save in costs associated with high poverty rates, it is not clear whether the program will have anything other then short term success on the participating children. Only time will tell if these programs will be successful in the long run. Cash incentive programs have been tried globally in places such as Mexico and Bangladesh, and have had varying success. If this program prospers, then it is certain that other states are not far behind in adopting their own versions. I would like to see if variations arise that extend to additional families who make a living wage but still do not have the financial freedom to miss work in order to attend a conference or to take care of an ailing child.

I truly hope that through this program New York has found a way to break the cycle of poverty that plagues so many families. By providing these incentives, children may very well become better educated and healthier in all stages of their lives. If so, then New York is undeniably giving these children the possibility of a much brighter future.

Thoughts?

“Too much work, and no vacation…”

Julie Schwartz Weber April 23rd, 2008

Last month, Experience Life Magazine published, “No Vacation Nation,” in which John De Graaf, President of Take Back Your Time, underscores both the lack of vacation time granted to Americans, and the importance of vacation for “improved physical and mental health, family life, productivity, creativity and personal well-being.” De Graaf notes,

“Americans may be materially richer than almost anyone else, but we have the poorest health in the industrial world…In 1980, we ranked 11th in the world in longevity; now we’re 42nd. We are twice as likely as Europeans to suffer from anxiety and depression. In large part, these deficits are caused by lack of time.”

The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that about one fourth of the U.S. workforce has no paid vacation in the course of their work year. Part-time workers, low-income earners, and workers in small establishments (fewer than 100 workers) are less likely to receive paid vacation and paid holidays, and when they do, these workers receive fewer paid days off. Specifically, lower-wage workers are less likely (69%) than higher-wage workers (88%) to have paid vacations, and part-timers are far less likely to have paid vacations (36%) than are full-timers (90%). Similarly, only 70% of employees in small establishments receive paid vacations.

CEPR also reports that there is no government mandate for even 1 paid vacation day in the U.S., but that 137 other countries (including all industrial nations) guarantee their workers at least 20 paid vacation days or 4 weeks time.