New Report Shows Nearly Half of Workers in Duluth Lack Access to Paid Sick Time

For Immediate Release, Contact: Eric Fought, eric@takeactionminnesota.org, 612-223-4744

New Report Shows Nearly Half of Workers in Duluth Lack Access to Paid Sick Time

DULUTH, Minn. (May 24, 2016) — On Tuesday, TakeAction Minnesota and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) released a new analysis, detailing access rates to earned sick time in Duluth, Minnesota. The new report, which can be downloaded here, breaks data down by gender, occupation, and earnings level.  Overall, the report concludes that across the Duluth workforce, forty-six percent lack access to even a single day of earned sick time off. Lack of access disproportionately affects low-wage, service-sector, and part-time workers in Duluth.

Jessica Milli, Study Director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, reviewed key findings from the analysis. The report provides an update and expansion of previous research conducted in 2014 by IWPR in Minnesota with the most recent data available and focuses specifically on the Duluth workforce.

Milli said, “The findings in Duluth follow the same patterns as those in other areas of Minnesota. Workers who are the most economically vulnerable in Duluth are the least likely to have access to paid sick leave.”

The analysis found that while fifty-four percent of Duluth workers currently have access to earned sick time benefits, access is not uniformly distributed across populations. Key findings include:

• Overall, approximately nineteen thousand five hundred workers (forty-six percent) in Duluth lack access to earned sick time benefits;
• Service workers—in particular, those in food preparation, hospitality, restaurant service, child care, personal care and other service occupations—are least likely to have access to earned sick time benefits, with only thirty percent having access. These service workers have frequent and close contact with the public, driving unnecessary public health risks;
• Earned sick time is particularly rare for Duluth workers clocking fewer than thirty-five hours per week, with only twenty-one percent of part-time workers having access to earned sick time, compared with seventy percent of workers working more than forty hours a week having access;
• A full eighty percent of full-time Duluth workers in the highest earnings brackets—those making over $65,000 annually—have access to earned sick time, while fewer than sixty percent of full-time workers in the lowest earnings brackets—those making $35,000 or less annually—have access to earned sick time benefits.

Joining Milli on the call was Debra Smith, a customer service representative from Duluth who worked for various temporary agencies for three years following being laid off from a previous position. While many of the temporary placements Smith worked were full-time, they did not offer any paid benefits, including paid sick time.

“I’m a single parent of a teenager, if I got sick or if my daughter got sick, I couldn’t take time off work or felt that if I did that I would be paid less,” said Smith. “And more times than not, I would take time off of work because our health is of primary importance. My child has asthma, so it’s very critical that I be available to take time off of work to care for her. So, we’d have to live on less. That would affect my ability to pay my rent or to purchase groceries.”

Smith now has a full-time customer service position and is able to take time off for medical appointments. “It’s an immense difference in our lives, I’m able to take time off for medical appointments for my child and feel the assurance that I’m not going to jeopardize my employment or jeopardize anything,” Smith said.

Also on the call was Katie Humphrey from the Northeast Area Labor Council, one of the coalition partners working to make Earned Sick and Safe Time happen in the city.

The report, prepared by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, analyzes data from government data sources, including the 2012-2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2012-2014 American Community Survey (ACS).

# # #

TakeAction Minnesota is a statewide people’s network of individual and organizational members working collaboratively to raise the voices of Minnesotans in their own communities to advance social, racial and economic justice. The organization has offices in St. Paul, Duluth and Grand Rapids.