If HB 4 Passes, Hawaii Will Have The Weakest Sick Leave Policy In The Nation.

If HB 4 passes, Hawaii will have the weakest sick leave policy in the nation.
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HB4, Relating to Health, is up before the Hawaii State Legislature’s Conference Committee tomorrow.

Unfortunately, as currently written, this legislation would put Hawaii on the map for having the weakest sick leave policy in the nation. Perceived by many as setting a dangerous precedent, HB 4 would be effectively symbolic, doing nothing to protect our state’s most vulnerable and low-income workers.

While ensuring a minimum amount of paid sick leave for all employees is a sound public policy that benefits the community and the workplace. HB 4 would allow for paid sick leave to be “provided based on a manner deemed suitable by the employer.” This is ill-defined, overly broad, and would be nearly impossible to enforce.

Hawaii needs a strong and robust paid sick leave law that protects the public health of our community, our residents, and our employees. Building a strong safety net for our families is not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.

The author's son at a Hawaiian fast food vendor in Stockholm, Sweden, Photo by Shay Chan Hodges

In mid-January, I returned to Hawaii from a month in Stockholm, Sweden, where I met with start-ups and unions to work on strategies for supporting workers and the innovation economy in Europe, the US, and Hawaii. In addition to conversations about strengthening worker rights, intellectual property rights, and building up the high-tech economy in Hawaii, there were also conversations about the economic importance of a safety net for families.

The US is an outlier among developed countries when it comes to social supports. Of the top 15 most competitive countries, only the U.S. offers no guaranteed sick leave. Workers in Sweden receive three weeks of paid sick leave with 100% wage replacement. (In some of the other thirteen competitive countries, workers can receive more than a year of paid sick leave.)

Sweden was also ranked 1st for business by Forbes Magazine. Meanwhile, the US continued its downward slide to 23.

Sweden is also considered one of the most innovative countries in the world, based on the caliber of universities, the number of scientific publications and international patent filings. (On our visit, we were fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with one of Sweden’s national treasures, who invented the GPS STDMA system for ship and air traffic control as well the pioneering color graphics processor.)

Per Forbes, taxes are still high in Sweden relative to the rest of the developed world. And those taxes pay for social supports such as paid sick leave, paid family leave, subsidized child care, free college, and health insurance.

Our time spent in Sweden with start-up founders and inventors made it very clear to us that when families are supported, individuals can be innovative and take risks without jeopardizing their children’s health and security. Meanwhile, as we’ve seen in our own state, when families are strapped and are basically holding their lives together with scotch tape and paper clips, it is much harder to have the time or resources to be innovative.

Paid sick leave is a necessary part of a robust safety net — and strong policies are needed to strengthen our economy while protecting the most vulnerable members of our community. Because HB 4 is so weak, it will not achieve either.

HB 4 creates an exemption for an employer who pays a certain amount above the minimum wage and creates an employee eligibility requirement that is currently left blank. This means that the current conference committee will insert the employer size, determining which employees get to earn paid sick leave. Also, HB 4 does not have any anti-retaliation language. This sets a dangerous stage for our most vulnerable workers who will have no protection in ensuring they access their paid sick leave.

HB 4 should not be passed as written. Hawaii should be leading the way in creating a strong and robust safety net for all of our families — to keep us all healthy and to build the infrastructure needed for a stronger economy. We can do this by drafting and passing the strongest paid leave laws in the nation — not the weakest.

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