Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu,
Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.
A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days.
So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was
aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home
the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.
"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.
An unusually early and vigorous
flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but
also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for the 40 percent of American private-sector workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.
Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City,
where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive
mayoral race.
Pointing to a flu outbreak that
the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors,
nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied
Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which
has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.
The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick
pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work,
which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's
people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on
your food,'" she said.
Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to
parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.
But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and
unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad,
given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm
Sandy.
Michael Sinesky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the
city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the
storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing
hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay,
"we're in survival mode."
"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional
social initiatives," said Sinesky, whose roughly 500 employees switch
shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say
benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.
Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a
contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use
hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the
University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study
in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick
time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009
swine flu outbreak.
To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill
anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the
work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about
spreading sickness.
"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up
against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting
others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A.
Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray &
Christmas.
Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four
places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the
state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.
Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the
state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a
sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time
requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid
sick day measure in Denver in 2011.
In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require
up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five
employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala,
who supports the idea nonetheless.
The idea boasts such supporters
as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon,
as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of
unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces
influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.
Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick
leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it
in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill
de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick
leave in light of the flu season.
While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the
flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without
explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a
day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be
reached by telephone.
"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."
Given
the advances in biotechnology, it's just a matter of time before humanity
can bring the Neanderthals back from the dead. Whether we should is a
completely different story, according to genomics and synthetic biology
pioneer 
Depending
on the specific payload, systems would provide a range of non-lethal
but useful capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption,
deception, networking, rescue, or any other mission that benefits from
being pre-distributed and hidden. An example class of systems might be
small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that launch to the surface in
capsules, take off and provide aerial situational awareness, networking
or decoy functions. Waterborne applications are sought as well.
