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Ellen Bravo directs Family Values @ Work, a network of state coalitions organizing to win paid sick days and paid family leave.
Ellen Bravo
Ellen Bravo directs Family Values @ Work, a network of state coalitions organizing to win paid sick days and paid family leave.
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November 20, 2014
There’s an old saying: “For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, For want of a shoe, a horse was lost, For want of a horse, a battle was lost, For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” One small thing can lead to big consequences.
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December 12, 2013
This blog was crossposted from Family Values @ Work “Unintended consequences” – this is the term we hear all the time from lobbyists for mega corporations when they try to block new policies that would allow people to care for their loved ones and provide for them. “You’re well-intentioned,” they drone, “but you’ll bring about unintended consequences that will hurt the very people you want to help.” What they really mean is: “You’re on your own and we don’t really care what happens to you or your loved one.” We’ll hear plenty of these predictors of doom when Sen. Kristin Gillibrand and Rep...
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June 14, 2013
Policies such as family and medical leave programs and earned sick days make it easier for fathers to bear their responsibilities. On this Father's Day, too many fathers have to choose between the family they love and the job they need. That's a choice no one should ever have to make. If we want Father's Day to be more than a Hallmark holiday, we need to become a nation that truly honors fathers — by making sure their workplaces welcome their parenting role. Our social policies must evolve so that our espoused values — that we care about families — catch up to the new reality that women are...
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May 3, 2013
Cross-posted from the Family Values @ Work Blog . Listen up, working moms and dads: Rep. Eric Cantor has a deal for you – more time to spend with your family! What’s not to like? Except for one hitch: You get to spend more time with your family only after you’ve been forced to spend more time at work away from your family. And your boss gets to decide when you take that extra time you’ve earned. After some reflection on why women have deserted the Republican Party, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gave a speech laying out the GOP plan to “Make Life Work” for working families. Enter the...
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April 24, 2013
This article originally appeared in Family Values @ Work . Home rule – guaranteed under the Florida state constitution — is a cherished conservative principle. It ensures the right of the people to determine and implement a public purpose at the grassroots level. So when is home rule not okay with conservative politicians connected to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC? Apparently, when local elected officials or voters stand with working families rather than corporate lobbyists. Local elected officials in Miami, Central Florida and Tallahassee rallied April 16 to oppose...
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December 10, 2012
I'm reading Junot Diaz's new book and my head is swimming with images of Ana Iris, a Dominican mother of three who hasn't seen her children in seven years. In order to feed them, she's come to New York and works two jobs, one laundering bloody hospital sheets and the other filleting fish. Even though the apartment she shares with several others is freezing in the winter, she sleeps with mosquito netting over her bed, which she folds neatly every morning. How does she survive? "You must not think on these things," she tells her best friend. "Keep them out of your mind. You do not want to go...
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May 12, 2012
My favorite Mother's day gifts from my sons were their original stories, songs and poems. But what I needed when they were infants and toddlers was something children can't deliver: affordable time off when they were born and when they were sick. So for all those candidates and elected officials interested in the women's vote and eager to prove their support for motherhood and families, here's a sampling of what mothers want and need, not just one day a year but every day: The right to care for a sick child or personal illness without losing our paychecks or our jobs. Moms need leaders to...
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March 8, 2012
More than a century ago, thousands of women walked out of garment shops – then one of the largest occupations for women – to march for better pay and working conditions. Their bravery inspired the annual celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8. Today garments are more likely to be sewn in Mexico than Manhattan. U.S. women are now clustered in restaurants and care work, two sectors where jobs can’t be shipped overseas and where employment for women continues to grow. Today it’s women in these jobs who are inspiring people with their fight for better pay and working conditions. Both...
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February 15, 2012
New York may be known for sex in the city, but Nancy Rankin at the Community Service Society of NY (CSSNY) has written a compelling report on a seamier topic: the unacceptably high percentages of New Yorkers without paid sick days, and the consequences for workers, their families, and for the economy. “Still Sick in the City: What the Lack of Paid Leave Means for Working New Yorkers,” is an update of a 2009 report, based on the group’s annual survey of what it calls the “Unheard Third.” Rankin demonstrates how the continuing effects of the economic crisis have forced more people to go to work...
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February 14, 2012
Name a country where large numbers of women legally earn less than minimum wage and have to drag themselves to work sick or risk losing their job. To all the places that come to mind, add the United States of America. The workers in question are employed in one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in our economy: the restaurant industry. And while revenues have been increasing even during the economic downturn, now amounting to $635 billion a year, the federal minimum wage for servers is $2.13 an hour and 90 percent of employees have no paid sick time. More than 7 in 10 of the workers...
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September 15, 2011
What’s most frightening about the movie Contagion is that it’s NOT science fiction. Flu epidemics are real, and they can spread quickly – especially in the United States, where 44 million people without paid sick days are forced to choose between their financial security and their health when they get sick. During the recent H1N1 outbreak, seven million people caught the flu from their co-workers who came to their jobs when they were ill. Who are the people who work sick? They’re workers like Tasha, a grocery store cashier and single mom in Seattle, whose upper respiratory infection lasted...
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May 27, 2011
Every night a second grade teacher washes the top cover of her reading couch because some child has had to come to class with the flu rather than staying home alone. A principal describes the number of high school students who miss school to stay home with a younger sibling because a parent can’t afford to miss a day of work. A hospital official laments the number of seniors lining the hallways because adult children can’t get off work to pick up a parent after an appointment or minor procedure. These are the images I carry around – these and the faces of workers who drag themselves to work...
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June 2, 2010
As the sheriff’s truck followed our van several blocks through Phoenix, I kept thinking what the sight of that vehicle would mean for Silvia or Esperanza or Alejandra or the other women we’d met: Visions of being yanked out of the van and ordered to produce papers. Picturing kids arriving to an empty house. Wondering whether the sheriff would drag you by the hair or slam you against a wall. Having no idea how long you’d be detained, or whether you’d be expelled from the place your ancestors called home. Agonizing whether an older child might have to drop out of school to get a job or care for...
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October 28, 2009
President Obama today signed the Defense Reauthorization Act with a provision for expanded family leave for military families. This is an important victory for all families in the U.S. because it acknowledges the value of caregivers in the health of our nation. The new provision, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Chris Dodd and in the House by Cong. Lynn Woolsey, will amend the Family and Medical Leave Act’s (FMLA) military family provisions first enacted in Fiscal Year 2008, allowing primary caregivers of military members to take up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave to care for the wounded service...
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October 9, 2008
Gwen Ifill was hobbled by more than a broken ankle at the vice presidential debate. The rules prevented her from asking any follow-up questions. I work with eleven statewide coalitions representing a million people, all fighting for policies that value families at work. Here are some questions we wish Gwen Ifill had been allowed to ask:
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