Massachusetts AFL-CIO Testimony Before the Joint Standing Committee on Labor and Workforce Development

Robert J. Haynes, MA AFL-CIO Testimony ~ Tuesday November 6, 2007 ~ 10 AM ~ Room B-2

Hearing before Joint Standing Committee on:
LABOR AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Chairman Torrisi, Chairman McGee and Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of two very important bills before you today. I am here to briefly offer our strong support for Paid Sick Days and the Worker Privacy Protection Act. As the President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, I speak to you today not only on behalf of the over 400,000 members but also on behalf of all workers.

First, let me begin with Paid Sick Days. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is fully supportive of Senate 1073 and House 1803 which seek to establish paid sick days. I thank the sponsors and co-sponsors of this legislation. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is proud to be a member of the Massachusetts Paid Leave Coalition. You have all received a copy of the Paid Sick Days Resolution which passed unanimously at out recent Constitutional Convention. This is an excellent example of partnerships which the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has formed with community groups to achieve common goals of economic and social justice.

Let’s face it – everyone gets sick – yet nearly half of all workers in this Commonwealth don’t get even a single paid sick day. It seems to me that we are not asking much by seeking a modest number of paid sick days so that workers can care for their sick children, spouses or elderly parents, or even themselves. It is a matter of fundamental fairness and equity. One hundred and thirty-nine other countries have no problem providing this simple benefit to its workers. It is time we do so as well. This is a small step and yet it has such a profound effect and resonates throughout the fabric of our community.

It is a family and children’s issue: Caring for children when they are ill is a solemn responsibility of parents. The responsibility is inter-generational and extends to our parents when they need us, and to us when we get older and rely on our children to care for us in our times of need.  

It is a health issue: When workers are forced to come to work sick, they make their co-workers sick, they make the customers sick, and their own health suffers. Children who have parental care recuperate more quickly and with routine checkups stay healthier, and the elderly can postpone or eliminate the need for nursing home admission; this care also provides substantial savings for our health care system.

It is a public health issue: Public health officials recommend that adults with the flu stay home for 5 days and children for 7 days not only to restore their own health, but to reduce the spread of disease. There have been serious outbreaks of contagious disease such as Hepatitis A because workers are forced to go to work sick. Do we really want housekeepers in hotels carrying their germs around from room to room? Or worse, do we want maintenance personnel in hospitals spreading their germs because they couldn’t take time off to get better?

It’s a health care reform issue: This legislature just passed a monumental health care reform which mandates that people have health care. If their employer doesn’t give it to them, the workers must purchase it. Yet the working poor or the lower middle class families who struggle to afford this health care cannot even use it because they cannot afford to take time off. Paid sick days are an essential component to true health care reform. We must give workers the opportunity to actually use the health care we are forcing them to have.

It is a women’s issue: Even today, women remain the primary caregivers and suffer the most stress by trying to balance the needs of their families and the demands of their jobs.

It is a jobs issue: Workers with good benefits such as paid sick days demonstrate higher employer loyalty, are healthier and lead less stressful lives.

It is an employer issue: Avoiding “presenteeism” (coming to work sick) is good for the bottom line – employers benefit from paid sick day policies with lower turnover, higher employee morale and productivity.

It is a quality of life issue:  Surely the United States can follow the lead of the rest of the world and provide time for one’s own health and for family care-giving.

It is an economic justice issue: Although almost half of all workers have no paid sick days, this number is much higher for low-wage workers.

And finally, it is a values issue: No Massachusetts workers should have to choose between caring for family and earning a day’s pay. Clearly, our state needs a new basic workplace standard to accommodate the needs of today’s working families. If we believe in family values, then let’s demonstrate that by valuing families and providing these paid sick days.

On behalf of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the working men and women of Massachusetts, I strongly urge this Committee to give this bill a favorable report on Paid Sick Days.

Secondly, and very briefly, I want to offer our strong support for House 1848 and Senate 1049, “An Act Concerning Employee Privacy and Mandatory Employer Meetings.” This is an issue of paramount importance for all workers in this country and this Commonwealth.

It has become a quiet and steady workplace epidemic since the Bush Administration took office. In a direct affront to our Bill of Rights, employers in this country are actively pushing political, religious and anti-union perspectives in mandatory meetings. They are requiring employees to attend meetings where the boss tells them specifically about political views, religious views and anti-union views.

This is a bill to protect the privacy and the individual choice of employees to decide what they want to expose themselves to in terms of political, religious or anti-union viewpoints. Workers should not be fired or punished because they do not want to attend a meeting that has nothing to do with their job.

Obviously, religious employers are exempt from this. Clearly, they have to talk about religion. But for 99-percent of employers, it is unconscionable that they be allowed to attempt to indoctrinate their workers about politics, religion or union affiliation. It is unconscionable that in a manufacturing plant, workers would be fired for exercising their Constitutional rights to forego a meeting about a certain religion, political view or the personal choice about whether or not to unionize.

No one is saying employers should not or cannot hold meetings on a range of subjects unrelated to work. No one is saying we should limit employers’ freedom of speech. Employers should be able to exercise their own freedom of speech. But we should prohibit employers from mandating these kinds of meetings and firing those who refuse to attend.

The Speaker and the Senate President in this legislature do not force you to attend meetings about religion. They don’t call meetings to strongly tell you what religion to practice. Imagine if they did? There would be an uproar. Well that is what’s happening in workplaces around this Commonwealth and around this country.

Employers are using captive audience meetings, mandatory meetings, to indoctrinate workers about politics, religion and union affiliation. And they are using them in a coercive nature, by making them mandatory and holding the threat of being fired over the heads of workers.

Clearly my chief concern is the captive audience meetings employers hold when a union tries to organize a workplace. It is one of the staples of union-avoidance and union-busting. In 91-percent of union organizing drives employers hold mandatory meetings to scare the workers into abandoning the union. The boss mandates a meeting for all employees, gets everyone in a room, and threatens all the workers about what horrible things will happen if they form a union. It’s despicable and it should be illegal. That is what this bill seeks to do.

But it is not just about mandatory meetings regarding unionization. We are talking about basic, fundamental, Constitutional American rights here. Just as the freedom to choose a religion and a political party, just as the freedom of speech and association, just as all our freedoms are afforded to individuals in society, so too should they be offered to us in the workplace.
This bill says loudly and clearly that this Commonwealth believes that democracy extends into the workplace and does not vanish at the gate.

I urge you to please report the Worker Privacy Protection Act favorably out of your Committee and work with us to prevent these intimidating, mandatory, captive audience meetings from hijacking the individual Constitutional rights of workers.

Additionally, please register our strong support for HB 1867 and HB 1823 to improve and strengthen our Commonwealth's prevailing wage laws. 

Thank you.