PathWaysPA pushes for law guaranteeing paid sick leave
Stephanie Tucker of Collingdale had only just started at her new caremanager job when she got diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer on Oct. 29, 2017.
A single mom, the 48-yearold struggled with paying her bills and fighting the illness.
“You see the bills come in and you don’t know how you’re going to pay them,” Tucker said. “If you can’t relax, your body’s not taking the time to heal.”
It’s for people like Tucker that advocacy groups like PathWays PA are lobbying for Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance funds.
Marianne Bellesorte, vice president of advocacy for PathWays PA, explained this is different than the Family Medical Leave Act, which requires someone to be out for a set amount of weeks up to 12 for medically related issues and does not include pay. The Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance funds would take a percentage of employees’ salary anywhere from 0.4 to 1.2 percent to be placed into a fund.
Then, when that employee needed to take time to care for a serious health condition for themselves or a family member or for the birth of a newborn, they would be able to be paid a percentage of their income for a set time. Both the percentage paid and the maximum time have yet to be determined but Bellesorte said advocates would like to see employees receive 66 percent of their pay.
“What we are hoping to do ... is a program that would be funded through a tiny employee premium so it would not be a burden on the employer to pay for family leave for every person in their company,” she said. “It would be a shared fund.”
In a 2016 Pennsylvania Department of Labor report entitled Paid Family & Medical Leave in Pennsylvania found that women with children under 18 years old in the workforce increased from 47.4 percent in 1975 to 72.9 percent in 2000 and that there are 40.4 million unpaid people caring for adults 65 years old and older. Of those, nine out of 10 were relatives caring for an aging relative.
Annette M. Hargadon, nurse navigator/breast care coordinator at Riddle Hospital, sees about 30 to 40 patients a month in her care and explained how work issues impact their approach to diagnosis.
“That’s got to be one of the biggest barriers to patients – ‘Can I work through this?’ ‘Will my employer hold this against me?’” she said. “It really does alter decision making for care.”
She’s had patients delay biopsies because they had a new job and no insurance, a crossing guard delay care for six weeks because she had to wait until June and a waitress struggling with how to work while sick because she needed the income.
“That’s what we’re faced with in the trenches,” Hargadon said. “The struggles these patients go through, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.” Tucker understands that conundrum they face.
Her own mother survived breast cancer but died of lung and bone cancer about 10 years ago.
She herself had felt a lump in her breast early in 2017 but she was working as a temp and then when she gained full-time work, the benefits took some time to be effective.
Tucker began chemotherapy treatments in November and they went through March – she’d get her chemo on Friday so she could be back at work on Monday.
She said by Monday, she was usually feeling the effects of the chemo and was very drained.
Yet, as much as she would’ve liked to sleep, Tucker told herself, “You have no choice but to go to work.”
Eventually, she ran out of her vacation and sick time.
“On the days I was going to get my treatments, I was not getting paid at all,” she said. “It was a little frustrating, it was a little draining.”
Yet, the bills had to get paid.
“I have a mortgage to pay, a car payment, Peco, Aqua,” Tucker said. “You try to call them and tell them what you’re going through this but they still want their payment.”
Even with disability, which was about 60 percent of her pay, with taxes and union dues and health insurance removed, it wasn’t much for a one-income household.
“I can’t wait this out,” she said. “I have to go back to work sooner rather than later.”
So, she worked right up until her April 9 bilateral mastectomy and then went back to work June 4, two weeks after she started radiation.
During radiation, she’d leave work, go right to radiation treatments, rest, then go to work, have her treatments, come home and repeat.
“Just to get one month of my full pay would’ve helped me a little more,” Tucker said. “I have to get back on track with my bills.”
As Bellesorte and others are trying to get the state legislature to introduce Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance funds legislation, Tucker said she hopes elected officials think about what it would be like to live off of what she does.
“I would really like for them to put themselves in my shoes,” she said, adding she’d like them to imagine having that taken away while going through a very serious illness.
“They’re supposed to work for us and do what’s best for us not these corporations and businesses we work for,” she said. “They’re more concerned about the (Federal) Drug Administration or the pharmaceutical companies ... They need to take into consideration that all of these bills that they’re passing they’re impacting real people and not companies.”
“What we are hoping to do ... is a program that would be funded through a tiny employee premium so it would not be a burden on the employer to pay for family leave for every person in their company. It would be a shared fund.” — Marianne Bellesorte, vice president of advocacy for PathWays PA