Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Rousmaniere, a business writer and consultant who lives in Woodstock.
[T]he passage of a paid sick leave law makes Vermont one of very few states and localities that have legislated this right. It applies to not all workers and employers. Still, it is an important advance; perhaps, as well, a harbinger for how Vermont could bring many worker protections into the 21st century.
The wage, hour, safety and other worker protection laws of the state, introduced over the course of a century, were initially intended to address risks some of which have radically changed even if the laws have not.
If one scans Vermont’s existing worker protections, and similar laws of most other states, and then matches these protections to the decade for which they appear most suitable in terms of economics and politics, that decade might be the 1960s or 1970s.
Compared to now, the workforce then was much more male dominated; risk of work injury was much greater; family cohesion was greater; and career mobility was much less than it is now.
In not a single state have political, business and labor leaders sat down to chart out a coherent, economically viable and predictable leave and disability vision.
Starting in the 1970s, social and economic conditions began to change dramatically, perhaps most notably in a vast increase of working mothers with young children. The changing conditions justified our new paid sick leave law – back in the 1990s.
What if we created and implemented a vision of 21st century worker protections, designed affordably to meet the needs of a healthy, confident, and upwardly mobile workforce?
These protections would include:
• well thought out parental and other leaves
• a better way of categorizing people as employees, self-employed, or some third category
• a far simpler workers’ compensation system.
Looking at each of these issues shows how reforms are better made when they are part of an overall commitment to modernize.
Work leave benefits have been going through an extraordinary change nationwide. Over the last 25 odd years, the number of federal, state and local leave and disability rights protections have grown from around 50 to over 400, including Vermont’s new law.
In not a single state have political, business and labor leaders sat down to chart out a coherent, economically viable and predictable leave and disability vision.
Then look at how people today are more often than in the past working in an ambiguous employee or self-employed status, in which these traditional terms, which arose long ago, don’t produce tidy answers. We need to use categories that apply in 2020, not 1960.
And, our workers’ compensation system is 100 years old. Work injury risks have declined precipitously. It is an elephantine mass of special insurance and regulation for an ever-diminishing number of injured workers. No one in the workers’ compensation system ever asks if there is a skinny version buried inside the current corpus.
Why not have a coherent 21st century deal for the Vermont worker? We could compete in the country with the best 21st century worker protections, if business, labor and political leaders wanted it to happen.
Or we could do what every other state is doing, which is fighting over incremental changes with no clear idea of what they all amount to.
