I 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1542 
To provide for paid sick leave to ensure that Americans can address their 
own health needs and the health needs of their families. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 15, 2007 
Ms. DELAURO (for herself, Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California, Mrs. MCCAR-
THY of New York, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. COHEN, Mr. ALLEN, Mr. DOYLE, 
Mr. OLVER, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut, Mr. LYNCH, 
Mrs. MALONEY of New York, and Ms. MCCOLLUM of Minnesota) intro-
duced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Edu-
cation and Labor, and in addition to the Committees on Oversight and 
Government Reform and House Administration, for a period to be subse-
quently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such 
provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned 
A BILL 
To provide for paid sick leave to ensure that Americans 
can address their own health needs and the health needs 
of their families. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Healthy Families Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
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(1) Working Americans need time to meet their 
own health care needs and to care for family mem-
bers, including their children, spouse, parents, and 
parents-in-law, and other children and adults for 
whom they are caretakers. 
(2) Health care needs include preventive health 
care, diagnostic procedures, medical treatment, and 
recovery in response to short- and long-term ill-
nesses and injuries. 
(3) Providing employees time off to meet health 
care needs ensures that they will be healthier in the 
long run. Preventive care helps avoid illnesses and 
injuries and routine medical care helps detect ill-
nesses early and shorten their duration. 
(4) When parents are available to care for their 
children who become sick, children recover faster, 
more serious illnesses are prevented, and children’s 
overall mental and physical health improve. Parents 
who cannot afford to miss work and must send chil-
dren with a contagious illness to child care or school 
contribute to the high rate of infections in child care 
centers and schools. 
(5) Providing paid sick leave improves public 
health by reducing infectious disease. Policies that 
make it easier for sick adults and children to be iso-
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lated at home reduce the spread of infectious dis-
ease. 
(6) Routine medical care reduces medical costs 
by detecting and treating illness and injury early, 
decreasing the need for emergency care. These sav-
ings benefit public and private payers of health in-
surance, including private businesses. 
(7) The provision of individual and family sick 
leave by large and small businesses, both here in the 
United States and elsewhere, demonstrates that pol-
icy solutions are both feasible and affordable in a 
competitive economy. Measures that ensure that em-
ployees are in good health and do not need to worry 
about unmet family health problems help businesses 
by promoting productivity and reducing employee 
turnover. 
(8) The American Productivity Audit found 
that presenteeism—the practice of employees coming 
to work despite illness—costs $180,000,000,000 an-
nually in lost productivity. Studies in the Journal of 
Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the Em-
ployee Benefit News, and the Harvard Business Re-
view show that presenteeism is a larger productivity 
drain than either absenteeism or short-term dis-
ability. 
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(9) The absence of paid sick leave has forced 
Americans to make untenable choices between need-
ed income and jobs on the one hand and caring for 
their own and their family’s health on the other. 
(10) Nearly half of Americans lack paid leave 
for self-care or to care for a family member. For 
families in the lowest quartile of earners, 79 percent 
lack paid sick leave. For families in the next 2 quar-
tiles, 46 and 38 percent, respectively, lack paid sick 
leave. Even for families in the highest income quar-
tile, 28 percent lack paid sick leave. In addition, mil-
lions of workers cannot use paid sick leave to care 
for ill family members. 
(11) Due to the roles of men and women in so-
ciety, the primary responsibility for family care-
taking often falls on women, and such responsibility 
affects the working lives of women more than it af-
fects the working lives of men. 
(12) An increasing number of men are also tak-
ing on caretaking obligations, and men who request 
leave time for caretaking purposes are often denied 
accommodation or penalized because of stereotypes 
that caretaking is only ‘‘women’s work’’. 
(13) Employers’ reliance on persistent stereo-
types about the ‘‘proper’’ roles of both men and 
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