9to5, Media Resources

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10 Things That Could Happen To You If You Didn't Have Paid Sick Days
Remember Tiny Tim And Give the Gift Of Sick Days

In the season of giving, 9to5 encourages employers and elected officials to remember families need to care for sick family members, just like sick Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. In a new report, released December 6, 9to5 documents what happens to workers without paid sick days. People have recently reported losing a job when a child breaks his arm or being forced to serve food while having the flu. Three out of four low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. And only one in six part-timers has any paid sick leave.

“10 Things That Could Happen To You if You Didn’t Have Paid Sick Days” highlights what many low-wage women will experience during the holidays, and throughout the year. 9to5 has studied barriers to employment for low-wage mothers, and has concluded that access to paid sick days is vital for workers. Even workers with other paid time off, like vacation, may not be allowed to take it for sickness, because of advance notice requirements or long wait times before it is available. See the PDF 10 Things That Could Happen To You

Keeping Jobs and Raising Families in Low-Income America: It Just Doesn't Work

Radcliffe Public Policy Center
9to5 Release Report on Low-Wage Parents

Six years after welfare reform mandated work as the solution for poor families, this report revealed that "it's just not working." The study, released as Congress begins discussion of welfare reform reauthorization, found an entrenched mismatch between the demands of caring for families and succeeding on the job. The conflicts are taking a toll on low-income women -- whether or not they've been on welfare -- as well as on their children and their employers.

The report, "Keeping Jobs and Raising Families in Low-Income America: It Just Doesn't Work," describes the findings from the Across the Boundaries Project, a two-year study conducted jointly by the Radcliffe Public Policy Center at Harvard University and 9to5, National Association of Working Women. Unlike most studies, the Across the Boundaries Project looked at low-wage work from a range of viewpoints, by asking the people who know this world best -- low-income parents, those who care for and educate their kids, and those who employ them. Half the parents were recently on welfare, the other half had either been off welfare for many years or had never received welfare.

Women in the Workforce: 9to5 Profile of Working Women 2004
The Profile of Working Women combines up-to-date facts and statistics on issues facing working women. Below are a sampling of facts in each of the categories.

Women in the Workforce

In 2004 women comprised 46.6% of all workers, compared to 38.1% in 1970

The number of women in the workforce has grown from 18.4 million in 1950 to 69 million in 2004

Pay Equity

Over a lifetime, the average 25 year-old women who works until age 65 will earn $523,000 less than the average working male.

In 2004, women earned 76 cents of every dollar that men earned.

Sixty percent of working women earn less than $25,000 each year.

60% of minimum wage workers are women (IWPR).

Work-Family

1/10 workers on family medical leave must apply for public assistance

Less then half the private sector is eligible for Family Medical Leave

The US lags behind in providing family leave and pay during leave,

France 12-16 weeks 100% of paid wages

Spain 16 weeks 100% of paid wages

Germany 14 weeks 100% of paid wages

Japan 14 weeks 60% of paid wages

United States 12 weeks 0% of paid wages

40% of single working mothers pay at least ½ their cash income for child care

About ½ the states have cut child care availability since 2001

Only 1/7 federally eligible children receive child care assistance

¾ of low-wage workers have no access to paid sick leave

43.6 million workers do not have health insurance and premiums for those who are covered have increased 50% in the last three years

47% of private sector workers are not provided with any paid sick time.

Children ages 5 to 17 miss an average of more than 3 days of school per year.

30% of the workers who have paid sick leave are permitted to use the time to care for sick children.

Nonstandard Workers

More than 58% of workers paid by temporary work agencies are women

40% of temporary workers surveyed were temp workers because temp work was the only type of work that they could find

Only 17% of temp jobs convert to permanent jobs

72% of part-time workers are women

Nearly 70% of those who hold 2 or more part-time jobs are women. Part-time work pays about 40% less per hour than a full-time job

Discrimination
Of all discriminations charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in 2004:

34.9% dealt with race discrimination

30.5% dealt with sexual discrimination

22.5% dealt with age discrimination

Poverty

In 1979, a single mother working full time at the minimum wage earned enough to lift a family of three (herself and two children) above the poverty line. In 2003, the same family would be 27% below the poverty line

The hourly wage that a full-time, year-round worker must earn to sustain a family of four at the poverty threshold, which was $8.70 in 2001

In 2000, 31.1% of women earned poverty-level wages or less, significantly more than the share of men (19.5%)

Women in Unions

The typical female union member earns 34% more than a woman who does not belong to a union

Unionized women of color earn almost 35% percent more than nonunion women of color

In 2004, 43% of all union workers were women

Unions also help close the wage gaps based on gender and minority status for their members

Women represented by unions earn almost 87 percent as much as union men

Retirement Security

Women have less in pensions and savings for retirement and therefore rely on Social Security for retirement income to a far greater degree than men.

More than half of all women 65 or older are widowed, divorced or never married. On average, these older women rely on Social Security for 71 percent of their income, compared with 64 percent for similar men.

Only 30 percent of all older women get a pension, compared with 47 percent of men.

On average, unmarried African American women receiving benefits rely on Social Security for 79 percent of their income, and Hispanic women count on it for 80 percent of their income.

Women primarily work in lifetime low-wage jobs with few benefits, and are more likely than men to be in temporary or part-time jobs, and more likely to interrupt their careers to care for children and elderly parents.

88% of working women say retirement or pension benefits are important. (AFL survey 2004)

For more statistics check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, AFL-CIO, "Ask a Working Women Survey Report," Economic Policy Institute.

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