Grantee Report Finds Too Many Restaurant Workers "Serving While Sick"

Thanks to Ms. Foundation grantee Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC), the battle to extend paid sick leave to all of our country's workers just heated up a notch.

In their new report, "Serving While Sick: High Risks & Low Benefits for the Nation's Restaurant Workforce, and Their Impact on the Consumer," [pdf] ROC found that 90% of workers in the restaurant industry lack paid sick leave and, as a result, 63% of those surveyed reported preparing, cooking and serving food while sick. In addition, 90% of those polled reported that their employers do not offer health insurance -- a reality that often leaves workers with little access to medical treatment when they do get sick.

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Push for Paycheck Fairness Today

Labor Day may be behind us, but there's still an opportunity to make a difference on behalf of workers nationwide -- particularly the women among them.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, which President Obama has already expressed his support for, seeks to remedy the persistent wage gap that keeps American women earning just 77 cents for every dollar their male colleagues earn. The legislation would allow victims of wage discrimination to sue for damages, and requires employers to prove that any disparities in pay between men and women are job-related.

As the President pointed out when he went public with his support for the act in July,

Women make up half of the workforce, and two-thirds of American families with children rely on a woman's wages as a significant portion of their families' income... Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women's wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.

Ms. Foundation grantee the National Partnership for Women and Families is running an important online campaign to build support for the measure; let your Senators know how much the Paycheck Fairness Act means to you today!

No-Cost Contraceptives a Possibility Under New Health Insurance Rules

Each year, 3 million unplanned pregnancies occur in the United States. Though there are any number of complicated reasons why women find themselves facing parenthood unexpectedly, one of them is quite simple: the cost of contraception.

With the roll out of new health-care mandates in the fall, however, an opportunity may arise to finally take the cost burden out of the picture for many women. The overhaul will force new insurers to provide a number of preventive care services to women at no cost -- and according to a recent Washington Post article, activists for reproductive justice are working to ensure that contraception becomes one of the no-cost services every insured woman qualifies for.

The article, which quotes spokespeople from the National Partnership for Women and Families and the National Women's Law Center -- both Ms. Foundation grantees -- notes that even the $20 -$50 co-payments currently required by many health plans that do cover contraception can often prove too much for young and low-income women. The goal, then, would be to remove cost barriers from access to birth control on the consumer side (as is done with "well-baby" visits for infants and young children, for example), which also protects the bottom lines of insurers and employers -- by helping prevent pregnancies that cost thousands of dollars to cover, versus the relative pennies contraceptives cost.

Predictably, religious and other conservative groups are opposing the measure, some on the basis that, "Fertility is not a disease to be cured." The final decision about whether contraception will make the grade as a covered service will be based on the recommendations of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which may take up to a year to come to a decision -- but from where we stand it's a no brainer: no woman should find herself facing an unwanted pregnancy because she can't afford birth control. The government has it within its power to make sure this is never the case; asking insurers to provide full coverage for contraception strikes us, quite simply, as the right -- and rational -- thing to do.