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Poll closes Monday February 21st…check back for results!

A press release from the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HARTFORD – A new report released today from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) in Washington, D.C., shows that implementing a paid sick leave bill would actually save Connecticut businesses nearly $73 million each year.

IWPR and the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) are releasing the report in conjunction with Pay Equity Day because paid sick day benefits are considered a critical companion to equal pay in eliminating workplace discrimination and ensuring women’s economic security.

Calculated weekly, IWPR estimates that the cost per covered worker would be just .19 cents per hour worked (or $6.87 per week), which is minimal, considering that the benefit to employers would be $12.32 weekly, for a net savings per worker of $5.45.

According to the study, funded by the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, universal paid sick days such as those being proposed in Senate Bill 63, would mean that the cost of implementing paid sick days would be far outstripped by a large reduction in costs associated with employee turnover. The report, “Valuing Good Health in Connecticut: The Costs and Benefits of Paid Sick Days,” authored by Dr. Kevin Miller, estimates businesses would save nearly $165 million in reduced workforce turnover and the prevention of communicable diseases such as influenza. Actual costs to businesses of wages, wage-based benefits, payroll taxes and administrative expenses associated with paid sick leave would total about $92 million, leaving a net savings of $73 million.

“Women continue to be the main caregivers in their families and therefore tend to lose more work time in order to care for a sick child or elderly relative, which increases workplace insecurity,” said Teresa Younger, executive director of the PCSW, a 37-year-old, non-partisan public policy arm of the Connecticut General Assembly. “This new study is more proof that it’s in the best interest of companies to allow dedicated workers to care for their own health, and the health of their families. This report shows that abuses of paid sick leave are minimal – half of all workers currently with paid sick days do not take off any time for illness in a given year. Clearly, the majority of people who take time off when they are ill are not only preventing the spread of disease, but are also coming back to their jobs more productive and ready for work.”

“Our research has repeatedly found that the monetary benefits of implementing paid sick days policies substantially defray and even outweigh the costs of implementing such policies,” IWPR’s Kevin Miller said in recent testimony before the Labor and Public Employees Committee. The General Assembly is now considering S.B. 63: An Act Mandating Employers Provide Paid Sick Leave to Employees.

Currently, about 553,000 Connecticut workers lack paid sick days, and of those, fewer than half (257,000) would be covered by the proposed law and would receive new paid sick days under the proposed law.

Key provisions of the proposed paid sick days law (SB 63)

- Workers (both full and part-time) at businesses with 50 or more employees would accrue paid sick time up to a maximum of 5 paid sick days (40 hours) per year, usable after 120 days of employment.

- Paid sick time may be used for diagnosis or treatment of a worker’s or child’s health condition or for preventive care, or to address the effects of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

For additional information, contact:

Kevin Miller, PhD.

Senior Research Associate

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

1200 18th Street NW, Suite 301

Washington, D.C. 20036

202/785-3398

Miller@iwpr.org

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The new campaign slogan for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women certainly gets right to the point. And if anyone is unconvinced of their assertion, then I wish you could have attended Women’s Day at the Capital on Tuesday.  Invited speakers and the public submitted testimony on Tuesday and called attention to many issues like health care, domestic violence and protection, education, employment, women in politics, and childcare.  Two high school students from the Young Women’s Leadership Program essay contest also read their winning essays which focused on breaking the cycle of domestic violence and the need for more women in leadership positions.

Women’s Day was really more just like the morning which was noted by two young women sitting behind me who discussed why there wasn’t a day full of activities.  Ironically, these two left a bit before noon but I internally hoped that was because they were heading over to Trinity College for their program on reproductive health “I had an illegal abortion: telling my story” at 12:15pm.  These women also noted the lack of diversity in the room.  True, most of the women there were white, well dressed and in 40+ age category.  There were several men in attendance.  The attorney general, a male photographer, the father of one essay contest winner, and two men who sat at the center table.  They didn’t have the appropriate name cards so I couldn’t find out who they were.  The morning must have been a bit boring for them because one left about an hour into the testimony and the other looked like he was sleeping.  After studying him for a few moments I noticed that it wasn’t because he was sleeping that he was so still, it was because he was typing on his phone…possibly updating his twitter page as a call for action on these women’s issues?

When one woman noted that the medical field has historically been dominated by females as midwives and mothers and it wasn’t until you could get paid $300k a year that men started taking over, the room erupted with laughter.  It wasn’t all jokes though, and Executive Director Teresa Younger took that very seriously.  I internally applauded Younger when she shushed two female political leaders talking during the testimony of Dr. Stefanie Chambers, which focused on the effect the recession had on women.

Younger has every right to be tense about this day.  For the second year, Governor Rell is calling for the elimination of the (Permanent) Commission on the Status of Women (which has been around for 37 years) in the state’s proposed budget.  Younger fought back last year and managed to save the commission but with a 65% cut in budget which eliminated half of the staff.  Community organizers presenting testimony also talked about the need to have the commission.  Several years ago a women’s clinic in New London faced closure due to funding. The PCSW stepped in to provide support and saved the clinic.

Enjoy this sprinkling of statistics from the morning!

- White women make .77 cents on the dollar compared to male counterparts while African American women make .70 cents and Latina women make .62 cents.

- 56% of medical bankruptcy filers are women.

- 1 in 7 women put off their annual obgyn appointment because of cost.

- Our current state childcare licenses can only care for 40% of children under the age of 5.

- Less than 4% of women serving on state commissions and boards are women of color.

- 80% of philanthropy is given by women, but only 10% of that reaches girls.

- 1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, which is the 2^nd leading cause of death for women behind lung cancer.  The risk of getting the cancer is lower in African American women but are 35% more likely to die from the disease then white women because of financial barriers.

- Women spend 68% more on health care then men because of reproductive health.

Any interested individuals may testify by submitting oral and/or written or electronic testimony. For oral testimony, sign-up will begin at 9:00 a.m in the same room as the hearing. Oral testimony should be no longer than 3 minutes. Please refer to the Connecticut General Assembly website for testimony formats (http://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/Content/YourVoice.asp).

Please note the first hour of the hearing is reserved for invited speakers.

For written testimony, submit 25 copies on the hearing date or mail it (18-20 Trinity Street, Hartford, CT 06106) or email it to PCSW (pcsw@cga.ct.gov) by Friday, February 5, 2009.

Women’s Day at the Capitol (formerly known at Making Women Visible Day) is an educational opportunity for the public and PCSW to present testimony regarding issues that affect women in Connecticut to legislators.  The Young Women’s Leadership Program high school essay contest winners will also read their essays.

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Greg Tate, founding co-artistic director, and actors Chinaza Uche and Brian Kopp discuss Hartbeat Ensemble’s Plays in the Parks 2009 and its theme: the economy hits home.

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Listen, my people. I have been around a long time. I have not only seen discrimination and injustice; I have felt its sting more than once. And I’m feeling it again. What is currently happening in our state and local government in the way of budget cuts and backroom tactics is just that, discriminatory and unjust. The poor, people who are currently experiencing homelessness, the sick, the mentally ill and the aged are all getting hit hard.  Social services are always the first to go. Public safety services are the next and then it goes into our schools with the removal of arts programming and transportation. It’s always the same. It never changes, and that is apparent again in the way our state and local government is trying to fix budgetary issues.

The thing is; they know exactly what they are doing, they know who will suffer and they just don’t care because it doesn’t further their own political careers or agendas. It doesn’t fund those special projects and it doesn’t get a certain populations vote.  You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise. You see – if you are poor, homeless, sick, in recovery, mentally ill or from another culture there is this punitive attitude that permeates.  In the good old US of A, you’ve got to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps and if you don’t, if you can’t, you are penalized and punished by those in power. You are punished repeatedly by society as well. I think that attitude is part of the reason why many of our elected officials are getting away with obvious discriminatory practices towards and upon this States poor, ill and aged. Not only do politicians have this attitude, so does the constituency. But I ask this: how can we pull ourselves up, when we keep getting set up to fail? How can we help ourselves without the resources?

It’s a cycle that is long overdue to be broken.

It’s written somewhere that hope springs eternal, but based on what I’ve seen over and over again, my level of hope for this city and this state is waning fast. Until we the people change our attitudes towards racist ideals, gender and age discrimination; and how we treat our fellow human beings, it will remain the same.