You are in the middle of a room. On one side is your child and health and on the other side is your job and livelihood. You can only pick one side. Which do you choose? If you choose your child and health, you risk losing your job and the security that comes with it. If you choose your job, you and your child suffer. This is the reality that many people, particularly mothers, in Colorado face.
Changes in traditional family structure and the increase of women in the labor force present tough questions that need to be answered. Should a woman have to choose between her career and her family? Is it even economically sustainable to ask her to do so when elected officials continually preach about the issue of unemployment? This is an especially pressing issue for women working low-wage jobs and single mothers with no safety net, where taking an unpaid sick day is the difference between lights on and lights off.
The group 9to5 has been fighting for a sick-leave measure in Colorado since 2011 when it partnered with Campaign for Healthy Denver to introduce Initiative 300, a ballot measure initiative requiring private sector businesses to pay up to nine days of sick leave for businesses with over 10 employees and up to five days for businesses with over five employees. Despite initial positive reactions, the initiative was met with strong opposition from business groups and was eventually voted down.
Scott DeFife, executive vice president of policy and government affairs at the National Restaurant Association was quoted by The Huffington Post, stating that, “We’re not really trying to debate whether workers in general should have time off when they’re ill. This is about the specifics of the initiatives they’ve been advancing”.
The specifics that DeFife was speaking of, namely businesses having to pay for the sick leave, have changed. SB 196, or the Family and Medical Leave Act, was introduced last year by Sen. Jessie Ulibarri. The bill called to establish an insurance program funded by employees that would allow them to take up to twelve weeks of partially paid sick leave. Although employers would not have to pay sick-leave, Loren Furman, senior vice president of state and federal relations for the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, has argued that it still poses a burden on employers because of the time and manpower to administer the measure.
Views from larger business organizations like the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry are not shared by all of Colorado’s business community. Last year, Mile High Business Alliance, Small Business Majority and Goodbee & Associates Inc. showed their support for such a measure. However, despite this support, late introduction and budgetary constraints left SB 196 dead in the water.
A sick leave measure has yet to show up as a bill in the early days of this legislative session but that is likely to change soon. The group 9to5 recently announced their legislative agenda for 2015 and the FAMLI Act, an act similar to last year’s Family and Medical Leave Act, is on the top of the list.
Past efforts to address this issue have failed. Women should not be disadvantaged because they have children. At the same time, a measure that hurts small business is not the solution either. Will 2015 be the year that parties can come together to find a realistic and feasible solution to this problem? Will the FAMLI Act be the solution we have been looking for?
Megan Van Winkle is studying Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver.
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