Home Democrats push forward with statewide sick time, family/medical go away payments

The Minnesota House Democrats are pushing up paid family and sick leave bills and sick leave bills for all Minnesota workers – actions that will face opposition in the GOP-controlled Minnesota Senate. Duluth Democrat Liz Olson says employers need to provide some “sick and safe time”:

“Your child is sick, you have to stay at home, you have a visit to a good child – things like that. It will be shorter cases – where family paid leave and medical leave will be the longer term absences, like when you adopt a child, someone in the family is at the end of their life, those kinds of things. “

Olson says family and medical leave are paid for from a state fund, to which employers and employees each contribute. Republicans are opposed to this, which would put an additional burden on already ailing employers and create another expensive government bureaucracy.