Single mom Kerry Florio, 26, of Norwalk and her 14-month-old son Erik joined activists from throughout the state on Thursday, lobbying lawmakers in the Capitol complex in attempt to push the so-called paid-sick-days law over the finish line in the waning weeks of the Legislature.
A unit secretary at Norwalk Hospital, the George Washington University graduate said in an interview that if the hospital didn’t give employees paid time-off for sickness, she might have lost her job last year after her infant developed symptoms of a respiratory virus and she had to take him to the emergency room. “I missed two shifts of work,” she told the Blogster, before she and other mothers commemorated “Take Your Child to Work Day.”
Members of the Connecticut Working Families and MomsRising.org, Florio and the others delivered packages of tissues along with booklets of stories from other working parents all over the state to members of the Appropriations Committee, where the bill is expected to be approved next week. The House is expected to pass the House, but the difficulty will be in gaining state Senate approval. Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he would sign such a bill, opposed by the state’s restaurant industry and other business groups, into law.
“What are the choices for a working parent without paid sick days?” said Lindsay Farrell, legislative director at Connecticut Working Families. “You can’t leave a young child home alone sick, you can’t afford to miss the pay you need to provide for your family, and you aren’t allowed to send a sick child to school. Sometimes, it means kids end up at work, sick. And that’s not right.”
Under the legislation, employers of 50 or more would have to allow workers to accumulate hours of sick time in a ratio to hours on the job.