EDITOR’S NOTE: Denver voters this fall are being asked to approve Initiative 300, which would require all employers in the city to provide paid sick time to employees. We asked a supporter of the measure and an opponent to weigh in.
As a home health care nurse, I know firsthand why we need paid sick days. It is my responsibility to care for sick and elderly patients so they regain or at least stabilize their health. Many of them are immuno-compromised because of illnesses like cancer and advanced diabetes. The last thing they need is to be exposed to a contagious disease.
Yet many home care workers — and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities — don’t have paid sick days. I never have. Our take-home pay is low so the painful reality is many of us simply can’t afford to pay the bills at the end of the month if we take a day off. So we potentially expose patients to the flu, norovirus and other contagious illnesses. This is wrong.
But in Denver we have the opportunity to prevent the spread of disease and protect the health of our community. We can vote “yes” on Initiative 300. Passing I-300 will help keep sick people at home and out of the workplace where they can spread their illness to co-workers, customers and clients. It will allow people to stay home to care for sick children or family members.
More than 107,000 Denver employees — 41 percent of all workers and 72 percent of food- service workers — have no paid sick days at their workplace. Many work in restaurants, child care, nursing homes and home-health services, placing them in direct contact with the public and often with the populations most vulnerable to contagious illness — children and seniors.
But without paid sick leave, some workers come to work sick rather than lose a day’s wage or, in some cases, their jobs. With jobs on the line, workers don’t call off when they’re ill, and the result is increased illnesses and higher rates of infection for us all.
Strategies that help prevent the spread of infections in the workplace by allowing people with contagious illnesses to stay home make good sense from the public health perspective. During the H1N1 outbreak, 7 million Americans caught the flu from their co-workers — in part because so many hard-working people were without paid sick days.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reports there were 24 Denver disease outbreaks in 2010, increasing in the last decade. In the nearby suburbs, the Tri-County Health Department investigated an outbreak of norovirus at a local restaurant. Originating with one sick worker, the outbreak sickened 30 percent of the restaurant’s employees as well as a number of patrons, resulting in at least three emergency room visits. It was costly, too: The restaurant and workers lost 1.5 days of revenue and pay, not to mention the long- term financial impact to their business and to the customers that got sick.
Children come to school sick because their parents are unable to take time off to stay at home with them.
Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise parents to keep sick children at home and away from other children to prevent the spread of disease. Sick kids should be able to stay at home, where they can get better and not expose their classmates, caretakers or teachers. Paid sick days will help ensure that Denver workers — and parents — don’t have to choose between being a good parent and a good employee.
We don’t want Denver to be the kind of city where public health is compromised by a lack of paid sick days. To promote and protect the health of all of Denver’s workers, families and businesses, we need to join other forward-thinking communities such as Seattle and San Francisco and pass the paid sick days initiative. To protect public health, vote “yes” on Initiative 300.
Patricia Hughes is a home health care nurse in Denver.
Highlights of Initiative 300:
• Would require that all people who work in Denver earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, limited to 72 hours a year for businesses with 10 or more people and 40 hours for smaller businesses.
• The time could be used to care for oneself or a family member (related by blood, marriage, legal adoption or affinity) in case of illness, need for preventive care or domestic violence needs.
• New businesses with fewer than 10 employees would not accrue paid sick time until they have been in business for one year.
