John, let's be honest. This is a massive crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic is spreading faster than our country is currently prepared to handle. Instead of stepping up & doing the right thing in this moment of crisis — Republicans blocked a bill last week that would have guaranteed full-time employees with seven paid sick days on a permanent basis, and an 14 additional paid sick days to be used during the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After several rounds of negotiations with the Trump administration, that bill turned into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed by the House and Senate and signed into law earlier this week — but it doesn't go far enough. The Department of Labor can still exempt businesses with fewer than 50 employees or more than 500 employees from providing workers with paid emergency leave.

This leaves many workers on the frontlines of this public health crisis — grocery store clerks, fast-food employees — in the dark. We're endangering millions of lives if we don’t pass expansive, sweeping paid sick leave as coronavirus continues to spread.

Will you sign our petition demanding Congress extend paid sick days to ALL full-time employees? Time is ticking and coronavirus will not wait for us.

Expand Paid Sick Leave »

A number of companies in the past couple of weeks have opened their eyes to the situation and have adopted guarantees to provide paid sick leave for workers, but we can't wait for others to do the right thing.

It's time for Congress to do the same and make sure this is a basic right for all workers in the United States.

There's real momentum forming to change the status quo — but we need our elected officials to to put aside partisan politics for the moment and realize that expanding paid sick leave is the key to protecting our country from a full-blown crisis.

But now they need our help to make sure they have enough public support to sway Republican votes and get a bill through the House while we still have time to prepare for even worse times. Please add your name to the petition.

Sign the Petition »

This issue is personal for me.

A decade ago, just after I graduated from law school, I got involved in the movement for paid sick days in NYC. And in 2013, thanks to a powerful coalition and champion legislators, we passed the law over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto. Helping to draft and negotiate that bill was one of the highlights of my career. Since that major NYC win, dozens of states and cities have passed similar laws, protecting public health and their most vulnerable workers.

But now, we can’t afford to wait for progress to just trickle in. We need to pass mandatory paid sick leave ASAP if we want to protect workers against the growing threat of coronavirus & make progress fighting this pandemic.

Please forward this petition to anyone you can. Thanks for the help.

— Ady

P.S. — On Wednesday night, I co-hosted an emergency organizing call with the Working Families Party to discuss the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic so far and strategize on all of the ways we can all help the acceleration of this response in our communities. We were joined by Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Bonnie Castillo, RN, Executive Director of NNU. Click here to watch the video now.

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