As we watch the battle over health reform play out against the backdrop of an H1N1 pandemic, I am reminded of many of the political lessons learned over the years ("don't get mad, organize", "all politics is local") including the exhortations of many posters here ("are you going to complain, or are you going to do something?") to work for change, real change that you can measure and see and feel.

As it happens, my home state of Connecticut is also home to a campaign to improve ordinary people's lives by highlighting a local legislative battle to mandate paid sick days for employers of larger companies. This is legislation that's come close to passing before (it's passed each chamber, but not in the same year), and this year, there's a concerted push to get it done.

Who doesn't have paid sick days? Among others, day care and nursing home workers, bus drivers, grocery workers and very likely your neighbors or someone you know. And from a societal and public health perspective, coming to work sick for these folks is a great way, for example, to spread flu and other illnesses, exactly what you don't want.

Here's a paragraph from the Connecticut Working Families Party blog:

Why paid sick days? Here’s my reason: According to a new study (pdf) , 8 million Americans went to work infected with swine flu. And 7 million caught H1N1 from a sick co-worker. And don’t forget, 24 people in Connecticut actually died from swine flu. There are a thousand reasons we need a basic workplace standard to allow Connecticut workers to earn paid sick days. But like clockwork, corporate lobbyists are already trotting out the same old canard that it’s too expensive for businesses. (As if it’s really profitable to make sick employees come to work.)

Here's local coverage of a hearing this week on the topic in Hartford:

Jon Green has been the Executive Director of Connecticut Working Families since 2002. Working Families is a coalition of neighborhood activist, community organizations and labor unions that is united to fight for the ‘kitchen table’ economic issues that matter most to working class and middle class families in Connecticut, like affordable healthcare, good jobs and fair taxes. He's kindly consented to answer a few questions on the issue of paid sick days in terms of practicality, affordability, politics and more.

Daily Kos: What’s the CT Working Families Party? Are you a political party? Do you endorse candidates?

Connecticut Working Families Party http://www.ct-workingfamilies.org/ is a independent progressive party formed by formed by union leaders and grassroots activists to fight for 'kitchen table' economic issues like affordable healthcare, living wage jobs and progressive taxes. We’re deeply troubled by the growing gap between the rich and just about everyone else. We work to hold elected officials in all parties accountable on issues of economic fairness for working and middle class families.

It’s important to point out that Working Families is very different from typical third parties. We operate in states that allow cross-endorsement http://www.ct-workingfamilies.org/... (also called "fusion voting") which means candidates can be nominated by a major party and a minor party like ours. For every office, from City Council up to Governor, Working Families studies the records of the candidates and endorses the ones who are most committed to fighting for our progressive values. Then we work our butts of to help them get elected.

In 2008 in Connecticut, our top priority race was helping to elect Democrat Jim Himes in CT-4. We knocked on tens of thousands of doors, talking to mostly unaffiliated suburban voters, asking people to vote for healthcare and jobs by voting on the Working Families line for Jim Himes - we delivered over 9000 votes on the Working Families ballot line to help push him over the top in an extremely tight race. Statewide, Working Families garnered about 85,000 votes for cross-endorsed Democratic Congressional candidates.

But Election Day is just the beginning. After Election Day, we work year-round to hold them accountable to their progressive promises on our issues. The paid sick days campaign is our top legislative priority this year.

Working Families is now a ballot-qualified party in 6 states -- New York http://workingfamiliesparty.org/ , Connecticut http://www.ct-workingfamilies.org/ , Oregon http://www.oregonwfp.org/ , South Carolina http://www.oregonwfp.org/ , Delaware http://www.delworkingfamilies.org/ and Vermont http://www.vtworkingfamilies.org/ . So look out for Working Families on a ballot near you.

Daily Kos: Who has responded to your call for new legislation?

The issue of paid sick days has been debated in the State Legislature for the past few years and has gained a fair amount of traction. The bill has actually passed in each of legislative chamber, but not in the same year.

The majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate support the bill and have voted for it. In the Senate, the bill has even received support from two Republican State Senators.

Some state legislators have made the bill a very high priority and have worked very hard to persuade their colleagues. There are still some nay-sayers – most of the Republican caucus and some Democrats as well. But we’re optimistic that the bill will pass – hopefully this year.

I should add that we're not alone in this fight. This year, we've built a broad coalition, including public health professionals, including the Connecticut State Medical Society <https://www.csms.org> and the Academy of Pediatrics <http://www.ct-aap.org> , women's advocacy organizations including Momsrising.org <http://momsrising.org> , NARAL <http://www.pro-choicect.org> , Planned Parenthood <http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ppsne> , CT Sexual Assault Crisis Services <http://www.connsacs.org> and CT Coalition Against Domestic Violence <http://www.ctcadv.org> , unions -- particularly those who represent service sector employees -- like SEIU locals 32BJ <http://www.seiu32bj.org> and CSEA <http://www.csea-ct.com> and UFCW <http://www.ufcw371.org> , anti-poverty organizations like CT Assocation for Human Services <http://www.cahs.org> , and more, and even a handful of small business owners.

Having a broad-based coalition, including a few who are not the usual suspects, has been instrumental, not to mention gratifying.

Daily Kos: Some might be surprised at who doesn’t have paid sick days. What kind of people in CT need this kind of legislation passed, and why?

According to research by the National Partnership for Women and Families (pdf) <http://everybodybenefits.org/psd_study.pdf> , an estimated 600,000 workers in Connecticut lack paid sick days. That includes lots of people in jobs with a high level of public interaction, people who prepare and serve our food, work as retail clerks, drive our children to school and take care of the sick and elderly as home health aids. More than 80% of restaurant workers lack paid sick days. In other words, the very people who have the highest chance of spreading illnesses are generally those most likely to lack paid sick days.

But to answer the question of who needs this legislation, the answer is all of us. Workers without paid sick days would of course by most impacted. Especially in a tough economy like this, we don't think people should be forced to choose between their livelihoods and their health or the health of their families.

For the rest of us, this is also a serious public health issue. Especially in the wake of the H1N1 outbreak, it should be clear that when people have no choice but to go to work sick, it puts us all in danger. According to research by the Institute for Women's Policy (pdf) <http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/B284sickatwork.pdf> , an estimated 8 million people went to work with the H1N1 swine flu virus. And workers without paid sick days were much more likely to do so. As a result, 7 million people caught the virus from a sick co-worker.

And it's not just about the swine flu. Do you ever go out to eat and catch a 'stomach flu'? According to the Center for Disease Control <http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/gastro/norovirus-factsheet.htm> , about half of the 23 million annual 'norovirus' infections are linked to an ill food service worker.

Allowing workers to take paid sick days could really take a bite out of the skyrocketing cost of our healthcare system. When employees can’t get time away from work to go to the doctor, they are less likely to get the kind of preventive care and early treatment of illnesses that we all know lowers overall healthcare costs. Without paid sick days, people are more likely to wait until a problem gets very serious (and very costly) and end up in our overcrowded emergency rooms.

Daily Kos: Does this actually have a chance to pass?

It does. Last year, our bill passed in the State House, but wound up deadlocked in the State Senate. The prior year, it passed in the Senate, but wasn't called for a vote in the House. We're building a massive grassroots campaign to make sure both houses do it this year.

If you live in Connecticut, you can ask your state legislators to support the paid sick days bill here:

http://action.workingfamiliesparty.o...

It certainly won't be easy: as you can imagine, our opponents, the CBIA (Connecticut's Chamber of Commerce) are trotting out the same old 'bad-for-business' canard. It’s fear tactic without a lot of evidence, but there are some legislators who are more motivated by fear than by facts.

Of course, if we could pass a law to stop people from ever getting sick, we surely would. But in fact, people do get sick. And if they face a choice between staying home and losing pay (maybe even losing their job) or going to work sick, more often than not people will go to work sick. That’s not good for anyone, including their employer. They are less productive employees, they take longer to recover, and by spreading their illnesses to others they simply compound the productivity loss.

Serious academic analysis actually suggests that businesses save money in the long run by enacting a paid sick days policy, mostly because of reduced spread of illness at the workplace and lower turnover.

And the experience that San Francisco had after enacting a paid sick days policy in 2007 confirms this research. According to the IWPR (pdf) <http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/B264_JobGrowth.pdf> job growth in San Francisco remained a strong as, or stronger than, any surrounding county. And in the restaurant industry, job growth actually ticked up following the implementation of the paid sick days policy.