The Los Angeles City Council voted Friday to increase paid leave for workers who have fallen ill or need to care for family — but only for workers at businesses with 500 or more employees nationwide.
One L.A. resident who phoned in to the meeting angrily told council members that she had been laid off from a company whose office closed because someone had symptoms consistent with COVID-19. Before it shut down, she said, a co-worker begged others to wash their hands properly to help protect his husband battling cancer.“People are dying. They died yesterday. They will die tomorrow.
City officials had been looking to protect workers who will not be covered by a federal law that will soon mandate 10 days of leave for workers who are under quarantine, have symptoms of COVID-19, or are caring for others because of the pandemic.released Wednesday, city analysts said the federal law does not cover companies with 500 or more employees. Small businesses — those with fewer than 50 workers — can seek an exemption from the federal rules, the report said.
After the vote, business owners and their representatives expressed relief about the decision to carve smaller businesses out of the new ordinance, saying the original proposal would have proven so costly that many businesses would have simply shut down. Labor and community groups that had been pushing for more sick leave were disappointed by the decision to carve out smaller businesses. Manuel Villanueva, lead organizer with the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles, called it “a slap in the face to those immigrant workers who are putting their life at risk right now to feed us.”
The new law was part of a package of measures aimed at helping L.A. workers cope with the economic effects of the virus.
articles like these should not count towards your free monthly article limit
I’ve said it 1k times, Dems will fuck you just as bad as rethuglicans!