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News release

Paid Sick Days Are Nothing to Sneeze At

April 27, 2011
Paid Sick Days

Lisa Lederer, 202-371-1996

Connecticut Moms and Other Advocates to Deliver Tissues and Messages Urging Passage of Paid Sick Days Legislation Thursday
We can no longer wait for paid sick days in this state. That’s the message that Connecticut Moms and other advocates for paid sick days will deliver to legislators who are members of the Joint Appropriations Committee. The group will hold a brief news conference before the delivery at:
 
10 am, Thursday April 28
Second Floor Atrium, Legislative Office Building
300 Capital Avenue
Hartford
 
Speakers will include:
  • Lindsay Farrell, Field Director, Connecticut Working Families
  • Joe Dinkin, Communications Director, Connecticut Working Families
And two Connecticut moms:
  • Kerry Florio of Norwalk and Deborah Coggshall of Rocky Hill, who will share their stories illustrating the importance of paid sick days to families.
Speakers and other advocates will then visit the office of Representative Toni Walker, Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, to deliver the first of several tissue-grams, packets of tissue paper bearing messages from moms, dads and others across Connecticut urging the Appropriations Committee to vote for Senate Bill 913: An Act Mandating Employers Provide Paid Sick Leave to Employees (SB 913).
 
They are all members of the EverybodyBenefits.org campaign for paid sick days, which includes MomsRising, Connecticut Working Families, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, labor unions, faith-based organizations, women’s advocates and health care providers. MomsRising is an online and on-the-ground grassroots organization for moms and everyone who has a mom, working to achieve economic security for all families in the United States.
 
Right now, two in five Connecticut workers do not have a single paid sick day. That means that if they are sick or have a sick child, they must choose between going to work and leaving that child at home alone or forfeiting a day’s pay, and possibly risking their job.
 
Florio, who is also a MomsRising member, shared her story in testimony before the Connecticut General Assembly Joint Labor and Employment Committee in March of this year.
 

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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.