Being able to stay home sick keeps workers and children healthy and businesses profitable.
Katrina vanden HeuvelMore than 40 million Americans work without any paid time off. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews.)
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Ian Rizzio was a 24-year-old mechanical engineering student in Portland, Oregon, managing a sandwich shop to pay his tuition. One day, he woke up sick, but went to work anyway, as he later testified to the Portland City Council. After vomiting in the bathroom, Rizzio spent two hours trying — unsuccessfully — to reach his boss before going home to rest.
When Rizzio came into work the next day, he was fired immediately. With $35,000 in student loans, he feared he’d have to withdraw from school.
Unfortunately, Rizzio is not alone.
More than 40 million Americans—disproportionately low-income, black and Latino workers—cook, clean, fold, and ring us up without any paid time off when they or their children are ill.
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and US politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The Guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.