Paid sick leave advocates submitted a petition to Denver’s Election Division Tuesday to qualify for November’s ballot.
The petition signatures were gathered by the Campaign for a Healthy Denver, a coalition of more than 50 community organizations, labor groups, faith leaders, elected officials and more that are seeking a ballot initiative to protect public health by guaranteeing a basic standard of paid sick days for all employees in Denver workplaces of all sizes.
In order to qualify for the ballot, the Campaign for Healthy Denver needed to gather 3,973 signatures. The Campaign claims to have more than three times the necessary signatures in a recent press release.
The Denver Post reports that the companies with fewer than 10 employees would have to offer five days of sick leave whereas larger employers would have to offer nine sick days.
Kyle Legleiter, President of the Colorado Public Health Association said this about the ballot initiative:
The paid sick and safe time ballot initiative protects the public's health. Most of the workers who will earn paid sick and safe time for the first time are lower-wage workers who may expose the public to illnesses in restaurants, childcare centers and medical caregiving, all because they simply cannot afford to miss a day’s pay.
Cities like San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have already enacted paid sick leave laws and Connecticut became the first state to adopt paid sick leave into law.