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Activists target Comcast over paid-sick leave lobbying
Activists have recently focused their campaign on Comcast, which spent $108,429.25 lobbying Council on paid sick leave in 2012.
Activists target Comcast over paid-sick leave lobbying
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Labor activists are delivering a "petition to City Council urging council members to stand with Philadelphia’s working families, not corporate lobbyists" ahead of tomorrow's vote on legislation that would require many employers to offer employees paid sick leave.
Activists have recently focused their campaign on Comcast, which spent $108,429.25 lobbying Council on paid sick leave in 2012, according to Philadelphia's Media Mobilizing Project.
The petition is signed by 60,000 people, including 14,000 who identified themselves as Comcast customers.
“Comcast is leading the charge to convince Council that their interests are more important than working Philadelphians' needs,” according to a statement from Bryan Mercer, the media rights & access organizer at Media Mobilizing Project. “Study after study shows that city businesses will save money and communities will be healthier if we have earned sick days for everyone. Over 60,000 people locally and across the country agree; City Council should listen to us, not to corporate lobbyists.”
Council passed paid-sick leave legislation in 2011 only to have it vetoed by Mayor Michael Nutter, citing what he described as the adverse affect of such legislation on the city's business competitiveness. It is unclear whether Council members can garner the necessary 12 votes to not only pass the bill again but override a likely mayoral veto.
Advocates describe paid sick leave as not only a workers' rights issue but a critical measure to protect public health. According to bill sponsor Councilman Bill Greenlee, approximately two out of five workers in Philadelphia do not have paid sick leave, including 36,300 restaurant workers and 38,600 health-care workers.
San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut all mandate some kind of paid sick leave. Last year, The New York Times editorialized that "there is little evidence that sick-leave requirements have hurt job markets elsewhere."
Last week, Greenlee criticized the Nutter administration for failing to send Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz to testify, before what was, after all, Council's Public Health and Human Services Committee, on a health-related bill. Instead, the administration sent Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Alan Greenberger.
"Dr. Schwarz is an honorable man, and he would have come here and told the truth," Greenlee told Greenberger. "That a big part of this issue is about the health of Philadelphians and the health of low-income workers, and to steal Jack Nicholson's line, 'You can't handle the truth.' "
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