Skip to main content
News release

Massachusetts Moms Provide Summer Reading for State Lawmakers

July 27, 2010
Paid Sick Days

Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996

MomsRising to Deliver Books of Personal Stories that Illustrate the Need for Paid Sick Days In the Commonwealth
Massachusetts moms are turning up the heat on Massachusetts lawmakers and urging them to bring the state’s paid sick days bill, An Act to Establish Paid Sick Days (HB1815/SB 688), to a vote before the summer is over. To drive home the importance of this legislation, Massachusetts MomsRising members will be delivering books containing personal stories from families all across the Commonwealth that illustrate the need for paid sick days. Moms and their kids will meet before delivering books at:
 
11:00 AM, Thursday, July 29
Grand Staircase
Massachusetts State House
Boston
 
HB 1815/SB 688 would ensure that all Massachusetts workers can earn a minimum of seven paid sick days annually to take care of their own health needs and those of family members. Currently, almost half (47 percent) of private sector Massachusetts workers do not have even a single guaranteed paid sick day.
 
The story book, Even Super Moms Can’t Fight All Germs! We Need Paid Sick Days, shares stories of the impossible choices, struggles, and the sometimes improbable triumphs of parents to care for their children and other loved ones when more than 1.4 million workers in Massachusetts, and more than 50 million workers nationwide do not have the right to earn paid sick days. MomsRising, an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization that supports family-friendly policies, compiled stories sent in by moms, dads and other family caregivers across Massachusetts into a single volume.
 
This spring, MomsRising members helped move the legislation through the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing when they delivered to committee members toy ambulances with messages attached urging the committee to vote on the legislation before July 31.
 

# # # #

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.