The company is one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the country, yet it has been able to avoid paying federal income taxes for the last two years. And Immelt alone took home $21.4 million last year.

But the news isn’t so good for the rest of us. Under Immelt’s leadership, GE has eliminated 19,000 U.S. jobs since 2008. Despite massive outsourcing of U.S. jobs, Immelt was appointed to lead President Obama’s job creation council earlier year.

With such an important position, it’s critical that Jeff Immelt knows what life is like for the other 99% of Americans. Because of his personal good fortune, he probably has no idea what it’s like to live from paycheck to paycheck or to see a job shipped overseas.

On Saturday, we’re going to visit Jeff Immelt’s house and tell him what life is like without a multimillion dollar income. Join us for the peaceful demonstration!

We’ll meet at Dorothy Heroy Recreation Center in Stamford and caravan from there. At Immelt’s house, we’ll listen to the stories of people impacted by the recession.

Transportation is available from Hartford and New Haven. The Hartford bus will pick people up at 9:30am at 30 Arbor Street and 9:45am at the Occupy Hartford Tent City on Broad St and Farmington Ave. In New Haven, the bus will pick people up 10:30am at the Northwest corner of the New Haven Green, the Corner of College Street and Elm Street.

Join us on Saturday to let Immelt know what life is like for the 99% during the economic downturn.

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=33327

Thanks for all you do,

Jon Green
Executive Director
www.connecticutworkingfamilies.org
PS – If you haven’t shared your story about how the crisis has affected you and your family, you can do so here. We’ll deliver your stories to Jeff Immelt’s house.

People are raising their voices against corporate greed. One of the best examples is here in Connecticut. GE has made billions in profits – while somehow managing to avoid paying any federal income taxes. CEO Jeff Immelt, took home $21 million in 2010. And, even though the company is sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash reserves, GE has shed more than 19,000 U.S. jobs since 2008.

But that didn’t stop Immelt from being named to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness early this year.

CEOs like Immelt don’t know what life is like for the other 99%. He needs to hear from you: If you or someone in your family is struggling, tell him about your lost jobs, your depressed wages, your struggles to keep your home and your healthcare.

Click here to share your story.

We’ll be delivering your stories right to Jeff Immelt.

CEOs like Immelt don’t understand what it’s like to live in these difficult times without a huge corporate income. While their paychecks have been getting bigger, ours have been getting smaller – if we’re lucky enough to still be getting one. They collect multi-million dollar bonuses while millions of us only collect unemployment. We need to make sure they understand what their corporate greed has done to our economy.

The message of Occupy Wall Street has struck a deep chord around the world and changed our idea of what we, the people, can accomplish by doing one simple thing: bearing witness on the very doorstep of those responsible for the global economic crisis.

The movement is catching hold with the public. Despite our growing strength, the Wall Street CEOs who crashed our economy still act like they can ignore us. So we’re raising our voices directly at the corporate bigwigs who caused this global crisis by delivering stories of how their greed has led to suffering for ordinary Americans.

Click here to explain to Jeff Immelt and other executives who just don’t get it how their boardroom decisions affect the other 99%:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4913

Thanks for all you do,

Jon Green
Executive Director
www.connecticutworkingfamilies.org

PS – Thanks for sharing your story. On Saturday, we’ll deliver some of them to Jeff Immelt personally. We hope you can join us. You can RSVP here.

Why are they doing it? Because in a tough economy, they think they can get away with it. They’re kicking workers when they’re already down, because they don’t think that workers will have the courage to fight back. But I think it’s time to stand up to bullies.

45,000 Verizon workers are on strike. And we’re standing with them.

We’ll be joining an informational picket line outside Verizon Wireless in Middletown tomorrow to stand with the workers. If you have some time after work, I hope you’ll stop by. Here are the details:

Stand with Verizon Workers
Tomorrow, Thursday, August 11, 5PM – 7PM
Verizon Wireless
955 Washington St Middletown
(Google Maps)

If there’s one thing we need now in this economy, it’s decent, stable jobs with good benefits. But Verizon is trying to put an end to all that. Their executives seem to think their own bloated pay packages aren’t quite bloated enough — and they’d rather stick it to the workers and keep more for themselves.

If you can’t make it, there’s one more important way you can help:

Please ask five friends to send a message to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to come back to the bargaining table. Messages poured in from around the country at the start of this week — let’s keep those messages coming in.

You can click here to share the action on Facebook, or, better yet, write a personal email pointing your friends and family to this page:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/t/12057/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4585

Thanks for all you do.

If there’s one thing our economy needs now, it’s good jobs with stable benefits. But Verizon is doing their best to make those a thing of the past.

Rather than bargain in good faith with their employees, Verizon management is demanding unprecedented concessions: the company wants to slash paid sick days, eliminate benefits for workers hurt on the job, and cut the health care benefits they promised to retirees. They’re even pushing a proposal to allow them to send more jobs overseas.

The workers are Verizon are standing up. For themselves, and for everyone else. Just like the workers and citizens in Wisconsin did.

They need our support. Please join us in calling on Verizon management to bargain in good faith. Nothing more, but nothing less, either. Here’s the link:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/t/12057/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4585

Verizon is one of the most profitable corporations in America. They make money hand over fist: $19 billion in profits the last four years, and over a quarter of a billion in pay for their top five executives. It’s an unreal amount of money. The workers deserve to share in the productivity gains that they help deliver.

But now Verizon is negotiating like the Tea Party, where compromise is a dirty word and the goal is to make a few people incredibly wealthy while tens of thousands get the shaft.

The American economy is in a serious crisis. Verizon is trying to take advantage of the crisis by lowering the living-standards of its employees and thus increase its profits. We can’t let that happen.

The workers are right to stand up. Let’s stand with them.

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/t/12057/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4585

A group of Tea Party extremists morphed a routine procedure to keep the nation’s lights on into a high stakes crisis. The result: trillions (that’s trillion with a t) in cuts to infrastructure and services, without asking multinational corporations or multimillionaires to pitch in even a single red cent.

And the “deal” was supported by majorities of Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

How did this happen? Columnist Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast gave one explanation[1]: “Since the economy collapsed in 2008, only one grassroots movement has emerged in response, and it’s been a movement of the right.”

I think it’s time we had a movement to go toe to toe with the Tea Party. That’s why I’m asking each of our supporters to help, and contribute $10 to Working Families today.

Make a $10 contribution to Working Families today.

If anything positive emerged from the wreckage of the debt ceiling debate it’s a renewed recognition that we need a movement too. Money and political power has not been so concentrated in the hands of few since the Gilded Age. We just can’t count on the politicians to solve our problems for us. We need to make them do the right thing.

That’s why Working Families was formed: to put the needs of ordinary families ahead of the wants of banks and billionaires once again. And today, that mission is more urgent than ever.

The Tea Party has heavy-duty corporate money to back it up, not to mention at least one cable news network dedicated to legitimizing its extreme views. We just have you. Hardly seems like a fair fight, to be honest, but we’re not backing down. I’m asking you to do the same. In fact, I’m asking you to step up.

Please contribute $10 to Working Families today.

We’re not going to match the corporate contributions to the Tea Party dollar for dollar – not by a long shot. But the kind of movement we need to build is one where everyone chips in a little.

If we don’t start taking a stand, things will only get worse.

The debt ceiling “deal” also creates an unprecedented “Super-Congress” made of 12 members of Congress authorized to make further debt reductions by November. That could put Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the line.

In times like this we can either give up or we can fight back. We’re ready to fight back, and we need your help to do it. Now more than ever we need a real movement to put working families first. To make politicians give us more than perpetual lip service on jobs, to tell our elected officials that it just is not acceptable to stand idly by as executives and CEOs rake in bonuses while hundreds of thousands of families are losing their jobs and the homes.

With so many families on the brink, and with the power of the Tea Party growing every day, there couldn’t be a more urgent moment to build this movement. That’s why we need your support.

Make your contribution right away.

Thanks, as always, for your help.

This is wrong. Politics is the art of compromise. But we can’t allow the President to give in to every extreme Tea Party demand.

Please add your name to our statement asking President Obama not to allow any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.

We’ll forward a copy of the petition to Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation, including Senators Blumenthal and Lieberman.

Extremists in the House of Representatives are holding the debt ceiling hostage until Obama agrees to give away the store and undo the New Deal. That’s a deal with the devil and he should walk away from it. We can do better. Cuts to social security and Medicare will hurt a fragile recovery, and it will damage the lives of seniors and the disabled.

Enough is enough.  Wall Street and the banks crashed the economy in 2008, and now the rest of us are left paying for the clean-up. It’s wrong and we need to fight back.

Add your name to our petition now.

Reports like the one we noted above are often nothing more than “trial balloons” — when officials leak an idea to the press to see how it flies before going with it or shooting it down.

We have to make it clear to our elected officials: this is an unacceptable deal.

Republicans claim cutting benefits for the elderly and disabled is the only “responsible” thing to do, but they won’t even talk about taxing millionaires or closing loopholes on hedge funds and companies that move jobs overseas. That’s not compromise.

We have an alternative in a smart and fair proposal from Sen. Kent Conrad, championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, that calls for a 50-50 split between increasing tax revenues and cutting government spending in order to reduce the deficit. That’s about as fair and balanced as it gets. [3]

Tell President Obama and the Democrats to stand up for working families and retirees. Here’s the link again:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1306/t/11911/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4446

Thanks for all your help.

Connecticut has become the first state to require companies to provide employees with paid sick leave with legislation signed into law by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who announced his action Tuesday.

The measure requires businesses in the service industry with 50 or more employees to allow workers to accrue one hour of sick time for every 40 hours worked. Backers estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 workers will benefit. Opponents said the law will make Connecticut less competitive.

School bus driver Desiree Rosado appeared before lawmakers urging her support of the bill. Rosado, a mother of three from Groton, said she has no sick days, just two personal days a year that she can use when she’s sick. Regardless of whether the bill passed, Rosado said she might look for a new job that offers better benefits.

“The only reason I’m doing what I’m doing is because of the kids,” she said. “They’re getting older, and I think I’m going to be looking for other things because of the benefits.”

The legislation was years in the making. It narrowly passed the Senate on May 25 on an 18-17 vote and was approved June 4 by the House of Representatives on a 76-65 vote after more than 11 hours of debate.

It was the fourth year supporters tried to get the bill through. Previous efforts withered under veto threats by then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican.

Malloy’s signature was expected, but the absence of a gathering to mark the first-in-the-nation law took its chief legislative backer by surprise. He signed the bill into law Friday but didn’t announce his action until Tuesday.

“I thought we were going to have a signing ceremony,” said Sen. Edith Prague, the Labor and Public Employees Committee co-chairwoman who championed the bill. “But he signed it and that’s the main thing.”

A Malloy spokesman said the governor might schedule a ceremonial bill signing, but right now is putting his stamp on bills as they reach his desk.

Malloy, a Democrat, made his support of paid sick leave a campaign issue last year, saying it was to safeguard public health. He persuaded wavering lawmakers to vote for it, Prague said.

“He was the key factor, there’s no doubt about it,” she said.

Backers have compared the legislation with workplace standards such as minimum wage, which was enacted in the 1930s, and occupational safety and health standards, which were adopted in the 1970s.

“When we raise the minimum wage, it raises wages for everyone,” said Jon Green, executive director of Connecticut Working Families, which lobbied for the legislation. “I think we’ll see paid sick time follow a similar trajectory over time.”

Joe Brennan, a lobbyist for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, dismissed that argument as absurd. The new law will make Connecticut less competitive with other states that do not tell business how many sick days they must provide to workers, he said.

“It affects decisions over the long term. It affects where investment dollars go,” he said. “It’s going to have some form of chilling effect.”

Businesses also object to what they see as government micromanaging the benefit packages and policies they offer.

“Where does it stop?” Brennan said. “Mandate vacation time? Mandate how many times people can get a coffee break during the day?”

Mike Aitken, director of government affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management, said he can see employers “carving back” benefits they offer to meet the state’s minimum requirements.

Connecticut’s new law allows employees to receive paid time off to care for themselves or a sick child or spouse. A service worker also can use paid sick time for reasons related to family violence or sexual assault.

Aitken said some small companies may scale back their sick leave policy to avoid confusion over how time off is used. Most employers already are moving toward providing paid time off and “really don’t want to know what you’re using the leave for,” he said.

“A mandate takes away flexibility,” he said.

Prague, D-Columbia, said lawmakers tried to accommodate many issues that businesses complained about, such as not barring restaurant workers from switching shifts. Majority Leader Brendan Sharkey said during the House debate that supporters of paid sick leave addressed the concerns of business and imposed limits such as exempting manufacturers and tax-exempt organizations.

Supporters said they were not retreating to gain more backing.

“By focusing the bill on service workers, we focused it on people who didn’t have it and needed it,” Green said.

Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, called the Connecticut law a “historic first step that has provided a shot in the arm” for lobbying campaigns. Her group was pushing for paid sick leave legislation.

Bills have been introduced in 20 states and cities, she said. San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are the only other jurisdictions mandating paid sick leave.

Green said he and others backing the mandate would like paid sick days to be available to all employees and the new law is a “good step in that direction.”

Prague was noncommittal about what she may do next year.

“I want to see how it works, how effective it is,” she said.

Yesterday, Senator Joe Lieberman joined with Oklahoma arch-conservative Senator Tom Coburn to announce a plan to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67.

Along with Social Security, Medicare is the foundation of economic security for millions of seniors citizens in America.

Sign our emergency petition to Senator Joe Lieberman:

Protect Medicare, don’t raise the age.

After you sign the petition, please click here to share this on Facebook.
It was just last week that we heard news reports of a North Carolina man, who underemployed and uninsured, held up a bank for $1 so he could go to jail and get the medical care he needs. He hopes to remain in jail at least until Medicare kicks in. It’s a sad story, and it’s one that could only happen in a country with a truly broken healthcare system.

The truth is, lots of people approaching the age of 65 put off urgently needed care because they can’t afford it until they are eligible for Medicare. The result is worse health outcomes, treatable diseases allowed to advance and higher costs.

If anything, we should be lowering the Medicare eligibility age. But two years ago, Lieberman nixed a proposal to drop the eligibility age to 55.

Senators Lieberman and Coburn, of course, will have taxpayer-funded healthcare for the rest of their lives. Is it really fair to strip away what they enjoy from other seniors?

Please join us by signing out emergency petition right away:

Tell Senator Lieberman: Hands off Medicare. Don’t raise the age.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s low approval ratings in a couple of recent polls should be of no surprise. When a governor leads the charge for substantial increases in sales and income taxes as a way of balancing a budget he knows his popularity will suffer.

The poll figures Malloy is concerned about are not those coming out within a few months of his taking office, it’s the popularity numbers that will be seen a couple of years from now when the discussion will turn to his possible re-election. The Democratic governor’s expectation is that he got the nasty stuff over early and has built a foundation for more placid budget debates to come. If a couple of years from now the state economy is in recovery and Malloy has been able to avoid any further tax hikes, his popularity could soar and the lousy approval ratings of June 2011 will be irrelevant.

On the other hand, if the state economy remains stuck in neutral, or goes in reverse, and those promises of pay raises and no layoffs for state workers create another budget crisis, then Malloy may be looking back wistfully at these poll numbers as not so bad.

What was surprising was the overwhelming support for the mandatory paid sick leave law, the first by a state in the nation. The latest Quinnipiac University poll showed 72 percent of those surveyed supporting the law requiring businesses with 50 or more employees to offer service workers at least five paid sick days a year. About eight in 10 women support the law and even a majority of Republicans.

Business and industry groups waged a rigorous effort to block approval of the law, warning that it would hurt businesses and cost jobs. Most people, however, apparently view it as a fairness and health issue —sick people should not have to choose between staying home and losing pay or dragging themselves into work and contaminating others.

Democrats nationally should take notice of these numbers and test them to see if they hold up in national polls. A federal mandatory paid sick leave law could have strong political appeal and Democrats can rest assured Republicans will prove a reliable foil in opposing it. It could provide Democrats a health-related campaign trifecta.

Republicans: They don’t want to pay you when you have to stay home sick; they don’t want a national health insurance coverage plan to help you get better; and when you get old they want your Medicare coverage to depend on an underfunded voucher program.

by Josh Eidelson (Alternet)

As progressives across the country struggle to beat back a wave of right-wing statewide legislation, their Connecticut counterparts are poised to celebrate a historic victory: the signing of a bill making their state the first in the nation mandating paid sick days. After passing Connecticut’s House and Senate over the past few weeks, the bill is headed to the desk of Governor Dan Malloy, who has backed it since his campaign. The Connecticut victory has emboldened activists pushing for similar legislation in New York City, Denver, Seattle, and Philadelphia – where the city council will vote on its own bill Thursday.

The Policy

The Connecticut bill requires service sector employers to provide employees at least one hour of paid sick time for each 40 hours they work. Workers can use these days to take care of themselves or a sick family member. The bill exempts businesses with under 50 employees, construction businesses and non-profits. Similar laws already exist at the municipal level in San Francisco, Milwaukee and Washington, DC.

Advocates have embraced paid sick leave as a policy that protects workers’ job security, families’ economic security, and public health, without cost to government. Analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the National Partnership for Women and Families shows that 40 million Americans work in jobs where they will never be eligible for paid sick leave. In a University of Chicago survey, the majority of workers without paid sick days reported having gone to work sick, and they were more than twice as likely to have gone to the emergency room because they lacked time off to go to a doctor’s office.

“It’s very hard to stand up and say people should go to work or send their kids to school sick,” said Andrew Friedman of Make the Road New York, “because it’s a public health nightmare, and any close look at it shows that it’s more expensive in the long run.”
Kia Murrell, who lobbied against paid sick leave for years for the Connecticut Business and Industry Alliance, claimed the bill will lead to lost jobs, worsened benefits and workers replaced by machines. She said businesses don’t offer paid sick days “because they can’t afford it,” and that if service workers working sick were a real threat to public health, “we would all be sick all the time.” Murrell suggested workers really come to work sick because they’re saving their sick days “for pleasure.” She also faulted workers for being too quick to call in sick: “A high-powered executive, if they get a cold, is more likely to tough it out.”

But analysis by the Drum Major Institute shows that since San Francisco passed the nation’s first citywide paid sick leave law, job growth and business growth there have outpaced the five surrounding counties, including Santa Clara Country, home of Silicon Valley. Four years after businesses mobilized against the bill, a study by the Economic Opportunity Institute shows that two-thirds of San Francisco employers now support the law.

The Connecticut Campaign

How has this campaign been able to gain momentum at a moment when progressives are fighting just to hold their ground against attacks on labor and public health?
Paid sick leave advocates in six states all pointed to the importance of strong coalitions; coalitions with breadth from drawing in many different communities and depth from months of outreach to turn voters into supporters and supporters into activists. Jon Green, director of

Connecticut’s Working Families Party and the allied Working Families Organization, sees it as a “fertile issue” in part because it “intersects with a wide cross-section of constituencies, some of whom don’t always work together.” Local coalitions include public health advocates, educators, labor, business owners, clergy, and women’s, senior citizens, domestic violence survivors, and LGBT groups.

Advocates also stressed the importance of using creative actions to engage the public and garner earned media, using research to debunk opposition claims; and working closely with elected officials to address their concerns and engage them in moving their peers.
All of those factors came into place in the victory in Connecticut, which Green described as the product of “strong strategy, good friends in the right places, lots of hard work and a little luck.” Progressives in Connecticut have spent years laying the groundwork through canvassing, coalition-building, and education efforts directed at politicians and the public.

Tactics included protests outside restaurants owned by wealthy chains that offer no sick leave, including Starbucks (Slogan: “No Coughing in My Coffee”) and the Olive Garden (“Infinite Breadsticks But No Sick Days”). In 2008, they got it through the state senate, but not the state house. In 2009, they got it through the state house, but not the state senate. In both sessions, it faced a promised veto by Governor Jodi Rell.

With Rell retiring, the multi-year push for paid sick days forced gubernatorial candidates to take sides on the issue during the campaign, and the election results created an opportunity for the cause to get across the finish line. Ned Lamont, who drew national attention running an anti-war campaign against Joe Lieberman in 2006, came out against paid sick days in a bid to recast himself as a centrist businessman. Lamont’s primary opponent, Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, embraced paid sick days, won the primary in an upset, and beat Republican Tom Foley in November.

Votes Malloy won on the ballot line of the Working Families Party exceeded his margin of victory over Foley, and Green says Malloy became “an increasingly full-throated and public advocate” for paid sick leave (Connecticut has fusion voting, which allows qualifying third parties the option of placing a “major party” candidate on their own ballot line). Progressives stepped up the pressure on new and returning politicians for a paid sick leave bill following the election, and this month their work paid off.

A Movement’s Moment?

Advocates in New York, Seattle, Denver, and Philadelphia have all declared the Connecticut bill a shot in the arm for their efforts to win paid sick leave in their own cities. Most of those efforts should come to a vote by the end of the year.

In Denver, activists are about to begin gathering signatures to put a citywide ordinance on the November ballot. Erin Bennett, executive director of Denver 9to5, said that after seeing the influence the business lobby was able to wield against statewide legislative efforts, progressives chose to go the citywide referendum route first. Last month supporters held a lunchtime downtown rally highlighting the lack of sick days for workers at nearby restaurants.

In Seattle, activists expect to see their bill introduced in City Council this month. Last month they held a community forum which drew 250 people, including staff representing each member of Council. “The system isn’t working when little children are crying in the school nurse’s office begging them not to call their mom,” said coalition director Marilyn Watkins. “I’d love to have [the bill] in place before the next flu season and school year starts.”

In Milwaukee, paid leave activists are on defense after Scott Walker signed a statewide bill of questionable legality which would preempt implementation of the citywide law voters passed by referendum in 2008. That battle is now in the courts. “For people who ran on the concept of local control to pass legislation that preempts what 70 percent of the population wanted is ludicrous and hypocritical,” said Vicki Shabo of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

In New York City, advocates built a veto-proof majority on Council last term, and are lobbying Council Speaker Christine Quinn to stop blocking a vote on their bill. Their campaign has included direct action targeting city council members, including gathering postcards from fellow congregants outside their churches and handing out bottles of hand sanitizer outside their chambers. Early in the campaign, 700 people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall.

Asked whether Speaker Quinn was right to see the strength of the economy as a relevant concern in deciding whether to allow a vote, NY Paid Leave Coalition chair Donna Dolan replied diplomatically: “It’s a relevant concern to the speaker, and that’s what’s key here.”

Dolan also noted that unemployment is worsened when workers lose their jobs for getting sick. Family Values @ Work executive director Ellen Bravo was more critical, saying that Quinn’s been making “the wrong calculation about whose support she needs” for a mayoral bid. Bravo suggested that Quinn will eventually realize the importance of paid sick leave to “groups without which her political ambitions will not advance,” including women and the LGBT community. Quinn is meeting regularly with the councilmember sponsoring of the legislation.

In Philadelphia, after a series of delays for amendments, a city council vote on paid sick days is scheduled for Thursday. Mayor Michael Nutter has indicated his opposition but has not said whether he would veto the bill. This year activists built a coalition of 100 organizations to help lobby City Council and gathered 17,000 postcards which they strung around the perimeter of City Hall. Marianne Bellesorte, senior director of Policy for Pathways PA, said she expected “a tight vote” Thursday, but expressed hope that the bill would pass and that Mayor Nutter would decide against a vetoing a policy with demonstrated popular support.
Bellesorte’s hopes were echoed by Dewetta Logan, a former social worker who now directs the Smart Beginnings Early Learning Center. “A child is not to supposed to be in our care if they have certain illnesses,” she said, “but there’s nothing I can do if a parent just can’t leave” to pick a sick child up.

The victory in Connecticut has strengthened the hopes of activists pushing for similar local laws– and hoping one day for national legislation. Several compared this campaign to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and increases in the minimum wage – campaigns which began with legislation in a few states, spread to others, and culminated in new federal law. The prospects for such a trajectory for paid sick leave are stronger now than they were a few weeks ago; how much stronger will become more clear over the next six months. The next test is on Thursday, in Philadelphia.

Josh Eidelson is a freelance writer and a union organizer based in Philadelphia. Check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.