Republicans in Congress have renewed their decades-old attack on the 40-hour workweek. Once again, they are pushing so-called “comp time” legislation that would allow employers to stop giving workers any extra pay for overtime work.

A three-judge panel in Orange County, Fla., yesterday ruled a paid sick leave initiative that garnered more than 50,000 signatures should be on the November ballot. But today is the deadline for printing ballots and the county’s mayor and the County Commission refused to put the measure before the voters.

Four county commissioners in Orange County, Fla., told more than 50,000 voters there that their voices don’t count. By a 4-3 margin Tuesday, the Orange County Commission voted to keep a paid sick leave initiative off the November ballot by requiring further review of the proposal, even though the petition for the ballot measure had been signed by more than 50,000 people and certified. Moving in the right direction, a three-judge panel ruled Friday that Mayor Teresa Jacobs has until Sunday, Sept. 16 at 3:30 p.m. to explain why the Earned Sick Time campaign’s emergency request for voters to be allowed to have their say should not be granted.

Take action at Vote Yes for Sick Earned Time!

Connecticut has become the first state in the nation to have a law requiring employers to provide paid sick days, and efforts to pass similar legislation are under way in several cities and states including Denver, Seattle, New York City, Massachusetts and Georgia. Only two cities in the nation, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have paid sick leave laws on the books.

More than 60,000 lives could be saved over the next three years under a new initiative announced today by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that would stop millions of preventable injuries and complications in hospital patient care over the next three years.

Workers at the top of the wage scale are more than four times more likely to have paid sick days than workers toiling near the bottom wage scale, says a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Economic Snapshot.

More than 44 million private-sector workers in the United States—­42 percent of the private-sector workforce­—don’t have paid sick days they can use to recover from a common illness like the flu, according to new research by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).