The president used his pen to do something nice for people on Labor Day.
President Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring federal contractors to give their employees seven paid sick days a year.
It’s the latest in a series of presidential actions on workplace issues, as Obama has taken unilateral action to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors, offer paid paternal leave for federal workers and encourage cities and states to enact similar policies.
Obama will announce the executive order in a Labor Day speech to a labor group in Boston, where the City Council passed an ordinance requiring up to six weeks of parental leave in April.
In all, 21 cities, counties and states have enacted paid leave policies since Obama called for local action in his State of the Union address — a key part of a White House effort to work around Congress on the issue.
But many of those city ordinances, like Obama’s executive orders, apply only to city employees and contractors, leading to big gaps in who’s covered. So Obama will renew his call for has taken as he calls on Congress to pass legislation requiring all businesses with 15 or more employees to offer up to seven paid sick days each year.
Republicans have been lukewarm to that proposal, saying they would burden small businesses that already face too much government regulation.
It would be nice if Congress enacted legislation like this so that it would be harder to repeal. After all, taking away paid time off for 300,000 may not be politically popular, but it isn’t exactly politically painful, either. A Republican president could do it as reflexively as they sneeze in the springtime.
Still, despite that, these reforms on both paid time off and family leave are nothing to sneeze at.
