Today marks Phase 3 of Republican Governor Charlie Baker’s reopening plan. That means that movie theaters (??), casinos (??), and gyms (??!?) are allowed to reopen today — even as states around the country are seeing resurgences of the COVID-19 outbreak.
And to make matters worse, this reopening is happening without any new, enforceable protections for workers.
If we want to have a successful, equitable recovery, then workers who are sick or are taking care of loved ones need to be able to stay home without fear of losing their job. Massachusetts’s 2014 earned sick time law does not provide enough hours to meet the scale of the crisis, and the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act has big coverage gaps that leave millions of front-line workers without paid sick time.
Massachusetts needs to pass Emergency Paid Sick Time legislation to ensure that all workers can take paid sick time during this crisis.
And for people to be able to stay home, they need a home to go back to. The eviction and foreclosure moratorium signed in April is set to expire next month, August 18. That means that, if the Legislature does not take action, working-class families across the state could face a wave of evictions during a possible COVID resurgence.
Evictions and foreclosures are bad for public health in the best of times. They are even more dangerous now, and the instability and insecurity is likely to hit Black and Brown families the hardest.
But, again the Legislature can take action here by extending the eviction/foreclosure moratorium, expanding mortgage deferment protections, and stabilizing both renters and small property owners.
And time is short. The Legislative session is set to end at the end of the month. If the Legislature does not finish the vital business of protecting workers and addressing the backlog of important pre-COVID legislative priorities, then legislators should stay in session until they finish.
Here’s where you come in.
(1) Call your legislators in support of these two bills & call on them to support extending the legislative session:
- S.2701 / H.4700: An Act relative to emergency paid sick time
- SD.2992 / HD.5166: An Act to guarantee housing stability during the COVID-19 emergency and recovery
(2) Email your legislators in support of these bills and extending the session.
(3) Share this email with five friends.
