An effort to require paid medical leave in the state of Maryland could be getting underway with three Baltimore groups calling it a public-health issue.
Forty percent of Maryland’s private-sector workers have no option to taking time off if they are ill.
That’s nearly 820-thousand people.
Jason Perkins-Cohen is executive director of the Job Opportunities Task Force – one of the organizations forming a coalition to make it the law.
He told the Baltimore Sunthat paid leave is guaranteed in much of the world and in some places in the US including Connecticut, San Francisco, Seattle and the District of Columbia.
But there is push back from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.
The Chamber’s President Kathleen Snyder warned that such a requirement could have an adverse impact on small business.
And the National Restaurant Association has strongly opposed such a mandate with three-quarters of food preparers and servers are not eligible for sick leave.
