Working Partnerships USA

Last night, the San José City Council voted unanimously to develop the most expansive emergency paid sick leave policy in the nation.

The policy will fill the three biggest gaps in recently passed federal law, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, by covering workers at large corporations, small businesses, and misclassified gig workers.

No one should have to choose between feeding their families and going to work sick. This paid sick leave policy is a critical step to protect our public health and flatten the curve of COVID-19.

Next Tuesday, the Council will vote on putting the policy into effect as an urgency ordinance, combining recommendations by Councilmembers Maya Esparza, Magdalena Carrasco, and Sylvia Arenas and Mayor Sam Liccardo.

The San José policy will cover the three big loopholes in the recently passed federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act — businesses with larger than 500 workers, employers with less than 50 employees, and misclassified gig workers.

All of these workers would have access to 14 days of income replacement for paid sick days. The ordinance would provide this protection to workers through December 2020, in line with the federal law.

Thank you to Councilmembers Esparza, Carrasco, and Arenas, and Mayor Liccardo for your leadership on this issue; to the dozens of small business, healthcare, labor, social service and community organizations who came together to push for this policy; and to the over 1,500 of you who have signed petitions, made calls, sent emails, and spoke during the Zoom meeting this afternoon.

We’re not done yet. We’ll need you to stay involved as the policy comes back to Council next week, and in the months to come as we fight to make this policy permanent.

This crisis highlights that we still desperately need a permanent paid sick leave policy in San Jose. Because the ordinance only applies during this emergency, San José remains the only one of the four largest cities in California without a permanent paid sick leave policy. We need a long-term policy to protect our workers, communities, and families both during the current outbreak and for the years to come.

Today, we’re launching a major expansion of our Fair Workplace Collaborative program to help people understand and apply for the resources and support that are so desperately needed right now.

As thousands of our friends and neighbors lose their jobs or face significant cuts to their hours because of COVID-19, we know people are trying to figure out how they will pay the bills and what resources are available to help them navigate this crisis.

In the past few weeks, we’ve received hundreds of calls to our Fair Workplace Collaborative advice line from people asking about unemployment insurance, state disability insurance, paid family leave, and other resources.

It is clear we need to scale up significantly to address the need for guidance and support in this moment.

Together with the County’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement and our community, legal aid, and small business partners in the Fair Workplace Collaborative, we are launching Santa Clara County CAN: COVID-19 Assistance Navigation.

Santa Clara County CAN will help people:

• Navigate safety net services, such as helping people understand what assistance they are eligible for and walking them through the application process.
• Connect with legal aid attorneys who can answer questions about work related issues, such as questions related to employment and income.

Anyone with questions should call our new hotline at 408-809-2124. Support is available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, with more languages to come.

Last year, we worked with the County of Santa Clara to establish the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, a new department focused on curbing wage theft, sexual assault, and other workplace abuse so we are all treated with dignity and respect at work. Together with the OLSE, we created the Fair Workplace Collaborative — a group of community organizations, legal advocates, nonprofits, and small business leaders — to be on-the-ground trusted messengers providing education and outreach to workers and small businesses.

As COVID-19 has upended all our lives, we’ve refocused the Collaborative to provide the information and advice workers need right now. With this expansion, we’ll be able to address the surging demand for information and advice.

Now more than ever, we are all seeing how thin the line is between getting by and financial disaster. As thousands of families face months of uncertainty, here at Working Partnerships USA and the Fair Workplace Collaborative we are committed to both providing immediate support, and driving the long term change we need so our community makes it through this pandemic and emerges stronger and more resilient.

On behalf of the entire Fair Workplace Collaborative: Vietnamese American Round Table, Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants, Day Worker Center of Mountain View, Step Forward Foundation, Enterprise Foundation, Latino Business Council of Silicon Valley, Working Partnerships USA

Ensuring that everyone has paid sick days is a vital part of how we flatten the COVID-19 curve and prevent our medical system from being overloaded.

Yesterday, the San José City Council rules committee took an important step to protect public health, voting to advance a paid sick leave ordinance to the full Council.

Many of the people doing essential jobs right now — Doordash drivers, restaurant chefs, pharmacists, and corner store clerks — face impossible choices between going to work sick and putting food on the table.

It brings us hope to see the Mayor and Council are acting to ensure that the people on the front lines of this crisis can stay home and seek care if they get sick.

The proposal will now go to a special meeting of the full Council on April 1, and then a final vote is expected on April 7. We’re calling on the Council to pass a strong urgency ordinance that covers everyone serving us during this crisis, including people working for gig corporations and small businesses.

Through the newly signed federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, small businesses will be fully repaid for providing sick leave through a refundable payroll tax credit. Carve outs in the federal law exclude corporations with over 500 employees and allow exemptions for many small businesses, meaning up to 80% of the nation’s workforce isn’t covered.

This is why it’s so critical for our cities to step up. As San José moves forward, other cities in our region should act as well. This virus does not stop at city boundaries, and our response must be collective as well.

This crisis highlights the permanent need for paid sick days. While focusing on urgent measures is understandable in this moment, as we move forward our elected leaders should ensure that working people do not lose paid sick days when the current state of emergency ends.

Thank you to Councilmembers Arenas, Carrasco, and Esparza for your leadership on this issue; to the broad coalition of health, housing, small business, and community organizations who sent letters of support; and to the thousands of you who amplified the call for paid sick days through petition signatures and phone calls.

In just two weeks, amidst an already hectic time, we came together to protect our community and the essential workers keeping us safe, fed, and cared for. In the coming weeks, we must all continue to step up to get this proposal over the finish line, expand sick days to other cities, and take the additional steps called for by this moment.

We will pull through this by pulling together.

As we shelter in place to reduce the spread of COVID19, countless families are losing the work that pays the bills. Here are some of the resources available to those who need help now in Santa Clara County.

This situation is changing daily. We will do our best to keep this list up to date and accurate. See this spreadsheet for the latest updates and additional resources.

Food

Food banks like Second Harvest and Sacred Heart are open and provide food to those in need. As schools are closed, youth under 18 are able to get grab-and-go breakfast and lunch at these locations.

Medical

Project Baseline is providing free COVID 19 testing to those at risk, check their website to see if you’re eligible. Other medical providers like AACI and Gardner Health Services are also providing support for medical services and advice.

Finance

Households who are eligible for rent assistance can apply through Sacred Heart and Destination: Home. This program is for those who have documented loss of income resulting from COVID-19 due to health, employment, or school/child care closures.

Workers’ Rights

If you are looking for more information regarding how to file Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, or California Paid Sick Leave or to check if you qualify, reach out to Santa Clara County’s OLSE Advice Line at (866) 870-7725, staffed together with our partners in the Fair Workplace Collaborative.

Check out this spreadsheet for more resources, and be sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest updates.

All working people need to be able to take paid time off if they or their family gets sick, especially as we deal with COVID-19.

In this crucial moment, cities across Santa Clara County must protect our communities and our health. No one should have to choose between making rent and taking care of their family.

This morning, San José City Councilmembers Maya Esparza, Magdalena Carrasco, and Sylvia Arenas took action, introducing the strongest paid sick leave policy in the nation.

We, along with health, housing, small business, labor, workers rights, and community organizations, are calling on all cities in Santa Clara County to join San José and ensure that everyone can take paid sick days when they need them, now and permanently.

Far too many people here have no choice but to keep working while sick. A 2014 study found that 1 in 3 workers in San José had no sick days (some may now have three days under a newer state law, but that’s far from enough for this crisis). These are the people who cook and serve us food, care for our children and seniors, and clean our buildings — and who are disproportionately women and people of color.

Lack of paid sick leave has serious consequences for our public health. Researchers found that during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak, roughly 30% of sick employees had to keep working, and may have infected up to 7 million more people as a result.

As Santa Clara County grapples with some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the nation, our cities must act. We’ve done this before, when our cities took a first-in-the-nation regional approach to raising the minimum wage.

Now we must join together again to protect our communities, workers, and families — both during the current outbreak and for the years to come.