Flawed options
Nearly half of Oklahomans lack paid sick time
W ith her 10-year-old daughter alone in a nearby conference room, Mykell Jones struggled to focus on her work.
“I was biting my nails,” said Jones, 31, who worried her boss would walk by and disapprove of her daughter being at the office.
Her daughter was too sick for school, but Jones said staying home to take care of her would have resulted in a financial hit she couldn’t afford.
For almost a decade Jones had worked as a personal assistant for an east Oklahoma City broadcasting company, working her way up to $11.75 an hour, or just under $25,000 before taxes.
“My paycheck on the first and 15th was just over $600, and taking eight hours off that check made a huge difference,” said Jones, a single mother who was not offered paid sick time from her employer. “There would be times when I had barely a penny for two weeks after paying all my bills. I’d say ‘It’s up to you, God, because I have nothing.’”
So when her daughter woke up with a fever and a cough, Jones was left with two flawed options.
“You feel bad because your child needs to be home and I need to be home with her,” Jones said. “But I couldn’t afford to do it. I’d pay for it later.”
Nearly 45 percent of Oklahoma workers are without paid sick time, many of which work in low-wage jobs, according to labor figures compiled by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Washington-based group that advocates for womenfocused polices.
For Jones, the stress that came any time she or her daughter became sick was amplified when she became pregnant with her second child.
“I was panicking and I was literally sick that I was pregnant again,” said Jones, who also lacked paid maternity leave. “I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant at work for a long time because I knew what that meant.”
Sick time laws
Just four states and 22 cities require employers to offer paid sick time, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Oregon.
Oklahoma Rep. Jason Dunnington filed legislation ahead of next year’s legislative session that would require all state businesses to offer one hour of paid sick time for every 40 hours worked, essentially giving employees a little more than a week of paid sick leave each year.
“You’ve got this large percentage of the workforce that has to choose between the job they need to feed their family or staying home if they are sick,” said Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, who filed a similar bill last year that failed to receive a committee hearing. “I really think this is a moral issue because we are either a state that believes in taking care of families, or bending toward businesses at all costs.”
Business groups and restaurant associations have been some of the biggest critics of paid sick time laws, including the State Chamber of Oklahoma, which opposes Dunnington’s bill.
“We don’t support any legislation that imposes greater restrictions on Oklahoma businesses than what you would find in another state,” said Mike Seney, senior vice president of policy analysis for the state chamber.
Seney said the chamber would prefer a paid sick time requirement be put in place at the federal level, although he has concern over what any mandate might mean for smaller businesses.
“It’s a requirement that would hurt smaller businesses more than larger ones,” Seney said.
Some sick time laws in other states don’t apply to small businesses, including an exemption for companies with fewer than 50 employees in Connecticut.
The federal government recently required its contractors to offer paid sick leave, but the United States is one of two developed nations without a national law in place requiring the benefit.
While President Barack Obama has advocated for a federal paid sick time requirement, supporters for such a measure admit it is a tough task made even tougher with an incoming Republican president and Congress.
President-elect Donald Trump expressed support for expansion of paid sick time from the campaign trail, but his secretary of labor nominee, fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder, has been a vocal critic of paid sick time requirements.
Without likely movement at the federal level, several more states are pushing forward paid maternity and sick time laws that could add several more states to the list in the coming years.
Bipartisan support
A couple of months into her pregnancy with her second child, Jones was told by her doctor to spend four weeks in bed connected to an IV as she battled severe dehydration.
It was a stretch off work she survived because of a supplemental workers insurance plan she personally carried.
“It at least got my rent paid, but I had two churches at that time help me with utilities,” Jones said.
Several months later when she gave birth to her daughter, Jones was again away from work without pay.
“I came back to work after a few weeks because I could not afford to stay away any longer,” Jones said. “Lord knows I wanted to, I wanted to continue bonding with my child and I was breast-feeding her. But I came back a little too early because I wasn’t getting paid.”
Shortly after returning to work, Jones was let go by her employer for what she called “unclear reasons.” She suspected her company was no longer eager to rely on a single mother with two children, especially with one being a newborn.
Jones landed a seasonal job with an accountant through tax season, but an unsuccessful job search over the summer convinced her she needed additional education in the hopes of securing a stable job that might someday come with benefits, like paid sick time.
Jones enrolled in a training program to become a certified nursing assistant, relying on state assistance to cover her home expenses while she was in school.
“I really don’t like it,” Jones said about accepting state aid through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. “But it gave me a way to go back to school.”
The lack of paid sick time can be especially challenging for single parents, which account for 35 percent of Oklahoma homes, according to 2015 census data.
National surveys have found bipartisan support among voters for paid sick time requirements, but legislation has traditionally been a tougher sell among Republican lawmakers.
“It’s about individual conversations with Republican members and I think we’ve seen that’s a winning strategy,” said Rep. Emily Virgin, D-Norman, who supports a paid sick time requirement in Oklahoma. “We also need to be talking to the business community and getting them on board.”
The Republicancontrolled state House passed a bill last year strengthening the state’s equal pay laws.
“That was a positive step and showed this is an important issue to Republicans and Democrats,” Virgin said.
As Jones completes her nursing assistant training she expects to enter a new career field with a starting pay less than what she made at her last job. But with paid sick time a likely benefit in her new field, she considers it a promotion.
“You can’t stop from being sick or having a sick child,” Jones said. “And those bills don’t stop. They never stop.”