Healthy Families

[featherynscale]

In the interest of being able to do my job, I get information feeds on employment law and related topics. Today, I got a heads-up on something that sounds pretty good. The Healthy Families Act (proposed in the House and in the Senate) would require any company employing more than 15 people to provide a small amount of paid sick time a year, which could be used either as straight sick time for the employee or as time to care for a sick family member. It's only requiring 7 days of paid time for full-time employees, but that's better than some folks get now.

Here's the kicker: if the act were to become law, it would permit an employee to take sick leave to care for a family member, and the definition built in is this: "...a child, parent, spouse, or any other individual related by blood or affinity who is the equivalent of a family relationship." (Italics mine.) So I'm down with that.

Also, the article says that "Sick leave may be used for a physical or mental absence", which sort of makes me snicker -- if I'm not going to be mentally here, I get paid for the day now, you know?

Also, triadruid made me a new icon. It's gonna go over on thejobfairy too if I ever get around to updating that. Lately it's all been too awful to post. :(

Comments

[kaidevis.livejournal.com]

Awesome! It'll be interesting to see how that wording changes under revision. I can already hear the Christian Right screaming about dilution of family values, etc.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Yeah, so far it seems to have attracted very little attention, but that could change. I have no doubt that there are some people who are willing to give up on caring for their own extended families and families of choice* just so that the queers can't have anything.

* Somebody tried to tell me the other day that the only sort of people who had 'families of choice' were poly people. I think about my grandma, who is a Southern woman and a member of the Assembly of God church, and how she pretty much adopted all her grandkids' friends when we were little -- she thought of every one of those kids as family. Later, when we all started to date, those people became family too, just about as soon as they were introduced. My grandma has the biggest chosen family of anybody I've ever known, and I'm thinking she's not the only one of her kind out there.

[kellan-m-solan.livejournal.com]

Meh, I can't count the number of people that have gone on at great length, generally for my benefit regarding how their church congregation adopted them as family and helped them turn their lives around because their upbringing had left something to be desired or whatever. Whoever tried to tell you that must live in a hole.

Additionally, while I'm not exactly the religious right, I'm also not poly. I even get on with my real family just fine. Wouldn't stop me from dropping what I had to take care of one of my close friends given the opportunity and I KNOW I've called on them to do the same. In a world where many of us live in 5+ different cities over the course of our lives, spanning 1000s of miles in many cases, 'Family of Choice' is nothing short of a social reality for almost everybody.

[liquidfun.livejournal.com]

Not to be pessimistic, but laws are interpreted by the courts. I can just see this getting diluted by the courts down to "you aren't ill unless a doctor says so", so without a diagnosed mental illness, doesn't count ... likewise, "equivalent of a family relationship" would include things like adopted children and foster children, but given the, ah, conservative nature of SC justices we'll likely still be stuck with "marriages recognized by the state" as the only spouse one can apply this to.

I'll keep my hopes up. I know my employer had a policy of only using sick leave and/or unscheduled PTO to care for somebody other than oneself of three days each year.

Back when both kids were grade school or younger, it just doesn't work well to tell them "sorry, you each need to get the flu/mumps/chicken pox at the same time, try and do it right before a weekend, and get better quickly".

Thank WPTB* for grandma.

*_{WPTB: Whatever Powers That Be}