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News release

Massachusetts Moms and Kids to State Legislature: Wake Up!

January 20, 2010
Paid Sick Days

Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996

MomsRising Representatives Deliver Coffee and Messages Encouraging Paid Sick Day Legislation
You can’t get this kind of service at Starbucks. Massachusetts moms wheeled their kids in wagons through the halls of the state legislature this morning, delivering bags of “back to work brew” coffee beans and notes encouraging the passage of a paid sick days law this year. The messages, from working families and small business owners across the state, were collected by MomsRising, an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization with more than a million members supporting family-friendly policies.
 
“Paid sick days are important for healthy, working families,” said MomsRising Executive Director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. “No parent should have to worry about losing a paycheck to care for themselves or a sick child. These kinds of policies are important to families in Massachusetts, and are also beneficial to the state – they reduce employee turnover and ease overall health costs.”
 
The Act Establishing Paid Sick Days (SB688/HB1815), introduced in the last legislative session, would ensure that all Massachusetts workers could earn a minimum of seven paid sick days annually to take care of their own health needs and those of family members. Sick days could also be used by victims of domestic violence for their medical, psychological and legal needs.
 
The messages MomsRising collected included:
 
I get nervous when my daughter gets sick, because I can’t afford to miss a day of work. How can I juggle working full-time, being a student and a mother with no policy to support me? If lawmakers believe in supporting women and families- then they should support this legislation
- Marianne Bullock
 
Sick leave is an essential component of our public health infrastructure. Unfortunately the reality for most families is that we are sending our kids to school sick, where it spreads and gets back to us - then we are sick too. What will happen in an epidemic illness when there's no system to stay home?
- Valerie, Arlington
 

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MomsRising.org is an on-the-ground and online grassroots organization of more than a million people who are working to increase family economic security, decrease discrimination against women and moms, and to build a nation where businesses and families can thrive. Established in 2006, MomsRising and its members are organizing and speaking out to improve public policy and to change the national dialogue on issues that are critically important to America’s families, including criminal justice reform, immigration policy reform, and gun safety. MomsRising is working for paid family and medical leave, affordable, high quality childcare and early learning, and for an end to the wage and hiring discrimination which penalizes women — particularly moms and women of color — and so many others. MomsRising advocates for access to healthy food for all kids, health care for all, earned sick days, and breastfeeding rights so that all children can have a healthy start. MomsRising maintains a Spanish language website: MamásConPoder.org. Sign up online at www.MomsRising.org — and follow us on our blog, and on Twitter and Facebook.