Balancing Work and Family

As part of our multi-state shared agenda, the Progressive States Network is working with its partners and leading experts to promote paid sick days reforms in states across the country. These reforms will allow parents to take care of sick children and workers to be more productive, while protecting the overall public health and preventing transmission of diseases within the workplace.  Fully 86% of the public in polling by the Public Welfare Foundation in 2008 supported enacting laws that guarantee paid sick days for all workers

In a significant decision last month, an Oklahoma County District Court ruled that a 2008 anti-choice law violated the state constitution.  The law in question (SB 1878) was more burdensome than any prior bill regulating pre-abortion ultrasounds passed in the country, requiring women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a doctor describe fetal characteristics before consenting to the procedure.  Opponents argued that the law invades a woman's right to privacy and violates doctors' freedom of speech.

Here's one way states can lower health care costs: reduce the most commonly performed surgery, namely Cesarean sections, or C-sections, to deliver babies -- roughly half of which are performed unnecessarily.

Last week, the Connecticut House approved legislation to guarantee paid sick days off for employees in any business with fifty or more employees.  While the Senate adjourned the regular session without voting on the bill, a special budget session to be convened might have a chance to enact the bill.

This Dispatch will discusshow funding from the federal recovery plan can help offset the costs ofmaintaining and even expanding early education programs. This Dispatchwill also highlight the economic and educational benefits of supportingearly education programs, as well as the different methods that stategovernments are employing to help reduce the cost of and promote theexpansion of quality early child care and state pre-k programs.

Even as Planned Parenthood, MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation team up in a campaign to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STD), state legislatures are acting to ensure students' access to comprehensive sex education and are rejecting federal funding for failed abstinence-only programs. Half of all sexually active people will have an STD by the age of 25 with 19 million new STD cases occurring each year. These statistics highlight the need for improving youth sex education.

Fifteen states have introduced paid sick days legislation to ensure that workers are able to regain their health without losing pay, or even worse, their jobs.  These are based on model policies that have already passed in San Francisco, CA, Milwaukee, WI and Washington, DC.

State Sen. Ray Cleary, a South Carolina Republican, has proposed S.286 to create a free dental screening program for schoolchildren in at least 3 of the state's poorest counties - where children are most likely to go without regular dental care. Sen. Cleary, a dentist himself, wants to combat the adverse effects that poor dental health has on a child's education, including the inability to focus while in school because of pain and missed school days. According to the Pew Center on the States, tooth decay is the most common childhood disease, affecting 60% of all children and causing kids across the country to miss 51 million hours of school time each year.

7 states are suing the federal government to stop a last minute rule by former President Bush that pre-empts state laws guaranteeing women's access to reproductive services, including abortion and emergency contraception. The so-called "provider conscience regulation" became effective on Tuesday shortly after President Obama's swearing-in and allows health care workers who object to abortion and contraception to deny women care.  This pre-empts state laws designed to ensure access to necessary reproductive care and threatens womens' health, as detailed by the National Women's Law Center.

One key victory on election day was a victory for paid sick days in Milwaukee by a commanding 69-31% of city voters.  Parents in Milwaukee who need to take a day off to care for a sick child can now afford to do so now that their paid sick days referendum has Milwaukee following the lead of San Francisco, CA and Washington DC. in adopting a program to require employers to provide paid sick days.  Under the measure, full-time workers in large businesses will earn up to 9 paid sick days a year and workers in smaller businesses with fewer than 10 employees will earn up to 5 days a year.