The Wisconsin Court of Appeals has lifted an injunction against a 2008 voter approved measure that requires Milwaukee businesses to provide at least nine paid sick days to all employees per year. According to Business Week, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, has come out against the city’s sick-leave law saying he’d support it if it were applied at the federal level, but implementing it only in Milwaukee could drive jobs elsewhere. The fight now goes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Similar legislation is being pushed around the country by the National Paid Sick Days Coalition which is funded by all the usual suspects including the AFL-CIO, Working America and a long list of unions. The coalition claims to have campaigns moving in 26 cities across the country including Philadelphia and NYC. Sick day measures are already on the books in Washington DC, and in San Francisco where supporters claim city employment rose 3.5% after the law went into effect.
Unions create lofty sounding “grassroots” campaigns like “living wage” and “sick day” campaigns (and exploit community and charitable partners while doing so) for a number of not so lofty reasons — to build coalitions they can then call upon to draw media attention to union boycotts and strikes during contract and leverage campaigns — to build voter lists and the GOTV apparatus needed to elect union friendlies and push a pro-union political agenda — and to create unenforcible ordinances they can then call into play down the road to smear any business they find in “violation” of those laws.
