At first, I didn’t take the paid sick leave initiative in San Antonio seriously enough, maybe because I’m fortunate enough to be compensated for days I’m out sick. Call it a failure of empathy.

Workers in Westchester rallied Monday afternoon in support of paid sick leave. Labor leaders say 125,000 employees in the county do not have it.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) has released a new study which finds that approximately 39 percent of San Antonio workers lack paid sick leave, a figure which puts San Antonio above the estimated national average of 36 percent.

Ale Tierra-Williams, a San Antonio-based cook, says the issue is not only a professional concern but also a matter of public health. “The thing is that I work in the service industry so I cannot be at work if I’m sick,” she says. “So that will be, for me, it’s losing hours, losing money and possibly getting fired. It’s that serious.”

This spring, as workers’ rights advocates began their push for mandatory paid sick leave for every worker employed in Dallas, one of the biggest questions that bubbled to the surface is just how many people in the city need paid sick leave.

While there will be some cost to employers, research shows that the benefits of paid sick leave laws far outweigh the costs. Benefits include reduced employee turnover (and the subsequent reduced cost of hiring and training new employees), higher productivity and morale, and better public health.

“No one should be forced to choose between earning a living, or safety for oneself and children,” wrote [New York City] First Lady Chirlane McCray, a co-chair of the Commission on Gender Equality, in an emailed statement to Refinery29.

Several organizations and two council members are pushing for paid sick leave to be mandatory for workers in Dallas.

A coalition of labor and community groups including the Texas AFL-CIO wants San Antonio voters to decide whether the city should require businesses to give workers paid sick leave.

Requiring paid sick leave for all workers could help the nation better cope with public-health problems such as flu, some analysts say.

For 20 million Americans, staying home sick is a luxury. Every year, that many people go to work with a virus or infection because they don’t have paid sick leave, even though research shows that staying home prevents the flu from spreading.

If this season’s widespread flu outbreak has hit you, you should stay home to rest and avoid spreading it to others. But, for those who don’t have paid sick days or any job-protected leave, that might not be an option.

Access to paid sick leave decreases the probability of job separation, and making coverage universal could substantially reduce medical costs, particularly those paid by public health insurance programs.

[I]f you have flu symptoms, you should stay home — and if your child is sick, you shouldn’t send him or her to school. Thanks to New York City’s paid sick leave law, we can all do that.

Public health risks are compounded when staff bring bugs to work because they can’t afford to take a sick day.

[W]hen I looked up requirements for companies to offer sick leave in the United States, I was shocked.

Washington on Monday became the seventh state — in addition to Washington, D.C. — to require employers to offer paid sick leave to their workers.

As small-business owners just getting off the ground, we couldn’t be more supportive of the Duluth City Council enacting a strong earned-sick-and-safe-time ordinance.

The minimum wage in Washington will go up once again and all employees will be able to receive paid sick leave by the beginning of next year.

An overflow crowd cheered on Tuesday when the Morristown council voted against tweaking an ordinance that requires local employers to provide paid sick days to workers who earn them.