Bill Thompson's wife had never seen him smile confidently. During the primary 20 years of their relationship, he lost one tooth after one other attributable to an infection in his mouth.
“I didn’t have any teeth to smile with,” said the 53-year-old from Independence, Missouri.
Thompson said he struggled for years as a cook at Burger King with throbbing toothaches and painful facial swelling from abscesses. He urgently needed to see a dentist but said he couldn't afford to take break day without pay. Missouri is one among many states that don't need Employers must provide paid sick leave.
So Thompson would do it Swallow Tylenol and overcoming the pain while working on the new grill.
“Either we go to work and get a paycheck,” Thompson said. “Or we take care of ourselves. We can't take care of ourselves because we're stuck in this vicious circle.”
In a rustic that has been sharply divided over government health mandates in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the general public has turn out to be comfortable with the concept of government regulations providing paid sick leave.
Before the pandemic 10 states and the District of Columbia had laws requiring employers to offer paid sick leave. Since then, Colorado, latest York, New Mexico, Illinois And Minnesota have passed laws providing some type of paid sick leave. Oregon And California expanded previous paid leave laws. In Missouri, AlaskaAnd NebraskaAdvocates are pushing to bring the difficulty to a vote in the autumn.
It is the USA one among nine countries which don’t guarantee paid sick leave, in keeping with data from the World Policy Analysis Center.
In response to the pandemic Congress passed the laws expanding emergency paid medical leave and expanding emergency family and medical leave. These temporary measures allowed employees to take as much as two weeks of paid sick leave for COVID-related illness and care. But the regulations expired in 2021.
“When the pandemic hit, we finally saw real political will to solve the problem of non-federal paid sick leave,” the economist said Hilary Wething.
Wething co-authored a current report from the Economic Policy Institute on the sick leave situation within the United States. It found that greater than half (61%) of the bottom paid employees should not entitled to sick leave.
“I was really surprised at how quickly losing wages – because you're sick – can lead to immediate and devastating cuts to a family's household budget,” she said.
“So paid sick leave is about both protecting the public health of a community and providing workers with the economic security they desperately need when they need to take time off from work,” she said.
The National Federation of Independent Business has rejected mandatory sick leave rules on the state level, arguing that workplaces must have the pliability to make arrangements with their employees in the event that they turn out to be sick. The group shared the prices Pay employees for break dayadditional paperwork and lost productivity burdens small employers.
According to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, after these regulations take effect, employees on average take two more sick days per yr than before a law comes into force.
Paid Leave Rules in Illinois got here into force this yr. Lauren Pattan is co-owner of Old Bakery Beer Co there. Before this yr, the craft brewery didn’t offer paid vacation to its hourly employees. Pattan said she supports Illinois' latest law but must work out pay for it.
“We're really trying to be respectful of our employees and be a good place to work, and at the same time we're worried about not being able to afford things,” she said.
That could mean customers should pay more to cover costs, Pattan said.
As for Bill Thompson, he wrote a comment for the Kansas City Star newspaper about his dental problems.
“Despite working nearly 40 hours a week, many of my colleagues are homeless,” he wrote. “Without health care, none of us can afford a doctor or dentist.”
This comment attracted local attention and in 2018, a dentist in his community donated his time and labor to remove Thompson's remaining teeth and replace them with dentures. This allowed his mouth to get better from the infections he had been battling for years. Today, Thompson has a brand new smile and a job — with paid sick leave — within the food service department at a hotel.
In his free time, he's collecting signatures to get an initiative on the November ballot that will at the least guarantee it five days earned paid sick leave per yr for Missouri employees. The petition organizers said they did so Enough signatures to place it before the voters.
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