HARTFORD, CT – The Labor and Public Employees Committee voted along party lines Thursday advanced a bill that would expand paid sick leave in the state. Republicans in the legislature remain in opposition.
Senate Bill 7 would change the current paid sick leave system, which currently only applies to employees of businesses with 50 or more employees. Workers for businesses of as few as one employee would accrue paid sick hours at a rate of one hour per every 30 hours worked, as workers for larger businesses do under the current system.
The bill has strong support from the governor, who said at a news conference Tuesday that the time is right to update the state’s paid sick leave system.
Gov. Ned Lamont said that expanding paid sick leave is important for domestic workers who do not work for large employers, and that it is time for Connecticut to catch up to other states on the issue.
“This day has been a long time coming,” Lamont said. “This is the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do for taking care of the people who are doing the work in our communities, and it also sends a message: this is the type of state where we welcome you [domestic workers], we respect workers, respect what they have to do in respect to taking care of their families – let’s get it done.”
Sen. Julie Kushner spoke after the governor.
“We have this opportunity to really recognize the needs of working people,” she said. “And so we need to fix this – it’s a hole in the way we treat workers in our state.”
Kushner said that workers shouldn’t have to choose between taking care of a sick child or going to work.
“It’s bad public policy to put workers in a situation where they have to choose between paying their rent and staying home with a sick child. So we’re going to fix that this session – I feel confident,” she said.
Republicans in the General Assembly argue that the program does not need more weight on its back, but instead needs to be fixed.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said after the governor’s news conference that before the state institutes another paid sick leave program, it should fix the one it currently has, because it is “clearly broken.”
“The fact is that we already have this program in place, under our Paid Family Leave Program,” he said. “So the question is why are we adding this on as a stopgap because employees are already paying half a percent of their paychecks a year for this, and that’s the program we should be relying on to give them these benefits.”
Ranking Member Rep. Steve Weir, R-Hebron, said legislation like SB 7 could give Connecticut a reputation as a state that is “bad for business.”
“There’s a presumption that I see in this building that if we want a certain initiative, that we will push it through, and the businesses will figure it out,” he said.
Weir said that the bill should not go forward, and that it would kill the viability of small business in the state.
There is substitute language in the bill, which defines the term “family” the same way it is defined in the Paid Family Medical Leave Program.
The senate bill and governor’s bill have a different effective date from the house bill that covers the same, and the amount of days that a new employee would have to work before qualifying for paid sick leave are also different.
“This is the year we’re going to get this over the finish line,” Lamont said.
Public hearing testimony on SB 7 was submitted by 207 individuals and organizations.
EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story erroneously reported that SB 7 was advanced to the House instead of the Senate.
