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By Erik Alsgaard

More than 700,000 people who live in Maryland do not have access to paid sick days at work. Across the United States, about 40 percent of all private-sector workers lack this same benefit, and when you look at low-wage or minimum wage workers, 80 percent do not earn paid sick days.

Last year, the Baltimore-Washington Conference passed a resolution in support of legislation that would require employers to allow workers to earn a limited number of annual paid sick days. The Maryland State Assembly is currently considering a bill—HB 968—that would create just such a benefit.

At its annual Legislative Day gathering Feb. 19, sponsored by the Conference United Methodist Women and Conference Board of Church and Society, more than 60 United Methodists came to Asbury UMC in Annapolis to learn more about HB 968, and to be trained before they visited state lawmakers in the Capitol.

Melissa Broome, Senior Policy Advocate with the Job Opportunities Task Force, told the group that the United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not mandate paid sick leave for employees.

“Those who can least afford to take time off,” she said, “have little or no ability to do so without losing pay. Every day, parents are faced with the question, ‘Do I pump some Tylenol into my sick child and hope they make it, or stay home?’”

Broome said that part of the proposed law includes a “safe leave” clause, whereby victims of domestic assault would be able to take a day off to attend court hearings, visit their lawyers, or take care of other business. Women make up 49 percent of Maryland’s workforce, according to the Maryland Campaign for Paid Sick Days, and 54 percent of working women lack access to paid leave.

Normally at Legislative Day, advocates would work on two or three bills before lawmakers, said Sherie Koob, chair of the BWC Board of Church and Society and a Guide in the Western Region. This year, however, the group was working on just this one bill.

For Koob, this legislation was personal.

A mother of two daughters, Koob said that both work but that neither accrue paid sick leave. One daughter, she said, is in a dilemma because her husband needs surgery but they can’t afford to have her miss work; they need the money. Thus, Koob will be coming in to care for her son-in-law, even though Koob knows he would rather have his wife as his care giver.

“It (this legislation) is important for folks to go and address,” she said.

Bishop Marcus Matthews brought the morning devotions for the group, encouraging them to continue to be a sign of the church.

“Go forth,” he said, “be that sign of the church; be a voice for those who are often not heard in Annapolis. It is up to people like you and me to make the slope a little bit easier to climb.”

The bishop shared his own testimony of how, on Feb. 8, 1968, while a student at South Carolina State University, he was part of a segregation demonstration on campus, now known as the Orangeburg Massacre. The person standing next to him, a friend of his, was shot in the back and killed.

“It was only by God’s grace that I was spared,” he said. That experience, he offered, shaped his life in profound ways, and naturally led to being part of the movement led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

King, Matthews said, knew that injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere. King never lost focus on the main thing in life, Matthews added: keeping Jesus Christ at the center in all he did.

“Today, you will be witnessing on behalf of the church,” the bishop said. “Let this day be a time to remember that we are heirs to the throne, not because of what we’ve done, but because of what Christ has done for us.”