The president used his pen to do something nice for people on Labor Day.
President Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring federal contractors to give their employees seven paid sick days a year.
It’s the latest in a series of presidential actions on workplace issues, as Obama has taken unilateral action to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors, offer paid paternal leave for federal workers and encourage cities and states to enact similar policies.
Obama will announce the executive order in a Labor Day speech to a labor group in Boston, where the City Council passed an ordinance requiring up to six weeks of parental leave in April.
In all, 21 cities, counties and states have enacted paid leave policies since Obama called for local action in his State of the Union address — a key part of a White House effort to work around Congress on the issue.
But many of those city ordinances, like Obama’s executive orders, apply only to city employees and contractors, leading to big gaps in who’s covered. So Obama will renew his call for has taken as he calls on Congress to pass legislation requiring all businesses with 15 or more employees to offer up to seven paid sick days each year.
Republicans have been lukewarm to that proposal, saying they would burden small businesses that already face too much government regulation.
It would be nice if Congress enacted legislation like this so that it would be harder to repeal. After all, taking away paid time off for 300,000 may not be politically popular, but it isn’t exactly politically painful, either. A Republican president could do it as reflexively as they sneeze in the springtime.
Still, despite that, these reforms on both paid time off and family leave are nothing to sneeze at.
Interesting. The conventional number used to be 10, but that is almost a decade ago. And then the compensatory time and Family Leave Act stuff started to make it complicated.
Happy Labor Day!!!
And, way to go, President!
Unfortunately, the policy won’t take effect until 2017 (i.e. next administration) so this is as much a political stunt as anything- not that getting the candidates to commit to support or oppose minimal sick leave is a bad thing, but really he should have done this years ago.
LOL! That’s some mighty fine trolling there.
THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANKS, OBAMA!!
Here, let me add to your Obama-bashing material:
http://www.epi.org/publication/millions-of-working-people-dont-get-paid-time-off-for-holidays-or-vac
ation/
This action of Obama’s proves he is a plutocrat!
Davis X will never run out of material, that’s for sure.
Remember, Obama sold us out.
He has always sold us out.
He will always sell us out.
He’s worse than Bush.
Chomsky is right. Nixon was the last liberal president.
You can’t change that. Or argue with Chomsky.
Also, too, this is an excellent place for a rerun of this:
I approve this message.
from TOD:
http://theobamadiary.com/2015/09/07/chat-away-661/#comment-1397845
Unlike Social Security and Medicare, OBAMACARE was the first expansion of the American Social Safety Net that, in its design, DID NOT EXCLUDE HUGE SWATHS of the American populace. It took the Robert’s Court to do that.
Doesn’t matter. No public option.
Remember, Obama sold us out.
He has always sold us out.
He will always sell us out.
He’s worse than Bush. Worse than Nixon.
Chomsky is right. Nixon was the last liberal president.
happy Labor Day Davis X, what would we do without you??!!
I’ll add a point similar to one Tarheel Dem regularly makes: this action by President Obama shows the value and the importance of organizing locally and statewide.
Last year a coalition of faith, labor and community groups collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to qualify two referendum questions for the 2014 ballot—one to create an earned sick time benefit (5 days/year for FT workers) for all workers, and the other raising the minimum wage.
Faced with that, the legislature raised the minimum wage on its own ($9/hour now, $10/hour next Jan., $11/hour in 2017—a 37% raise over three years for the lowest paid workers in the state). Voters overwhelmingly approved the sick time question, creating a new benefit for nearly 1 million workers.
Even with a Democratic president in 2017 it’s pretty unlikely Republicans will lose control of Congress. That means legislative fights will largely shift to the state and local level.