Click here to read about S.B. 312
March 8, 2022
To the Honorable Co-Chairs Representative Porter and Senator Kushner, Vice Chairs, Ranking
Members, and distinguished members of the Labor and Public Employees Committee:
We write from the Collaborative Center for Justice, a Catholic social justice advocacy
organization, primarily sponsored by six Congregations of Women Religious across the state.
Our mission includes working for systemic change and advocating for policies that improve the
lives of low-income and other marginalized people. We write in strong support of S.B. 312: An
Act Concerning the Expansion of Connecticut Paid Sick Days.
We believe that each person is created in the image of God, and has inherent worth and dignity.
Every person deserves to be well, and to attend to their health. Connecticut’s current sick time
law leaves out too many employees, since it only applies to employers with 50 or more
employees in certain service occupations. Employees at smaller companies and workers in all
fields, including domestic workers, need to have the same access to paid sick leave to care for
themselves or family members that workers at larger companies do. Working at a small company
does not make someone any less likely to need to attend a doctor’s appointment or care for a sick
child. Access to paid sick time is important in order to maintain and attend to employees’ basic
health and wellbeing.
Without paid sick time, employees are faced with impossible choices when they or a loved one
gets sick: either go to work sick, or stay home and lose the money they would have made that
day, and maybe even risk losing their job. The pandemic has illuminated the reality that our
health is often impacted by that of our neighbors and coworkers. A sick worker who depends on
their paycheck to meet basic needs and who does not have access to paid sick time may feel like
the only choice they have is to go to work sick. A worker whose child is sick may make the
difficult decision to send their sick child to daycare because they cannot afford to miss a day’s
pay by staying home with their ill child. These are decisions that no one should have to make,
and they impact not only the family making the decision but the health of the wider community
as well. Workers are do their best with the limited, often unjust choices available to them. The
state should embrace policies that provide employees the support needed to stay home from work
when sick. An expanded sick day law will improve the health and wellbeing of many workers
across the state.
Paid sick time is not only an economic justice issue, but also a racial and gender justice issue.
The majority of domestic and essential workers are women and people of color, and often lack
access to paid sick time. Continuing to leave these workers behind by not expanding access to
paid sick time will perpetuate and exacerbate long-standing racial and gender inequities.
We support the bill’s efforts to update the definition of family to align with the definition that
was adopted in the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act that Connecticut passed in 2019. Right
now, the sick time law only includes taking time to care for the employee, their children under
18, and their spouse. This narrow definition does not meet the needs of all family structures, and
the use of a more comprehensive definition of family has already been affirmed by the state with
passage of CT’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Act.
We firmly believe that expanding the access of paid sick time to all workers, and allowing sick
time to be used as it is accrued, is critical to promoting the health and wellbeing of all workers
across the state.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony on this bill. We hope you will vote S.B. 312:
An Act Concerning the Expansion of Connecticut Paid Sick Days favorably out of committee
this session.
Respectfully submitted,
Dwayne David Paul – Director
Rachel Lea Scott, MSW – Associate Director
