I get really tired of the knee-jerk reactions of special interest groups against any new idea. But such is the state of our system of democracy today. What we need are solutions to problems that such organizations can accommodate-give a little.
Business organizations should support an earned, paid sick leave law because it is the right thing to do and it will be good for business.
Witness a recent National Public Radio report that the owner of the Pond House Cafe in Hartford, CT (with fewer than 50 workers) has offered paid sick time for a decade. The owner noted that providing paid sick leave hasn’t been a large cost impact on his business and that it has helped with the retention rate of his employees. According to NPR, he noted that “his competitors don’t poach his employees as easily.” I’m sure he is not alone.
And of course sick workers make lousy workers. Sick workers spread disease. Perhaps business owners who oppose providing sick leave should have to pay a healthcare tax as an alternative because they are spreading sickness!
Marilyn Askin
Monroe Township
The letter above was received from the Princeton Forrestal Village office of the AARP New Jersey.
#b#On Einstein & Race#/b#
In response to Richard K. Rein’s January 14 column, “Einstein on Race.” The article “The Negro Question” by Einstein in Princeton, 1945, was 70 years ago and still our local school system refuses to include ethics as a subject in the social studies curriculum.
At age 89 I am teaching Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” at Rutgers’ Osher Institute.
I refuse to give up.
Bill Roufberg
A Kendall Park resident, Roufberg is a retired history teacher at Princeton High School.
#b#Correction:#/b# A careful reader, Jon Zoll, wrote to note several errors in Richard K. Rein’s January 28 column. First he misspelled the last name of New England coach Bill Belichick. And he misstated the cause of the NFL’s $500,000 of Belichick. In fact it was related to charges in 2007 that New England was taping coaching signals during a game against the New York Jets.
In 2002 the Boston Herald had charged that the Patriots secretly taped a St. Louis Rams walk-through prior to Super Bowl XXXVI. As Zoll notes, “that story was later retracted by the Herald (though the retraction received less attention than the original accusation), and the NFL found no evidence to support the charge.”
