Worker

In an economy where many of us can at least tread water, Philadelphia's low-income workers are drowning. About two out of five workers in Philadelphia have no paid sick leave. In response, a City Council committee last week approved a sick-leave ordinance that would require Philadelphia businesses of six or more employees to provide a limited number of earned, paid sick days. A vote before the full Council could come as early as this week. Businesses can easily supply a nominal amount of paid sick days.

A 50-year-old Gloucester County man died Monday when he fell through the roof of a recycling center in a Camden industrial park. The victim, of Franklinville, was cleaning the roof of the building on the 2200 block of Mount Ephraim Avenue when he fell to an elevated platform several feet off the floor shortly before 8:30 a.m., the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. His identity was not released. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident. Authorities said the man died at the scene of multiple injuries.

New Jersey employers who hire and train former pharmaceutical workers can receive training grants of up to $14,000 per worker over six months, the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development announced Monday. Employers from all industries can participate, but the program will only cover former employees from approved locations of Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffman-La Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., and Pfizer. The state received the federal grant that underwrites this program in October 2010.

The medical examiner said the fatal fall earlier today of a Franklinville man at an industrial real estate park in Camden was an accident. The 50-year-old victim, whose identify was not released, was cleaning the roof of a building in the roughly 80-acre complex on the 2200 block of Mount Ephraim Avenue when he fell through the roof shortly before 8:30 a.m., the Camden County Prosecutor's Office said. The victim died of multiple injuries at the scene, authorities said. He was employed by Harris Camden Realty, which owns the complex, said company vice-president Thomas Harris III. Harris said the victim was cleaning the flat roof at ReCommunity Recycling, which leases space in the complex, when he fell about four stories.

Charles Perry Gallun, 71, a social worker and victims' rights advocate who pioneered treatment for perpetrators of domestic violence, died Thursday at his home in Germantown. The cause was complications of lung cancer, according to his family. Mr. Gallun, who grew up in West Philadelphia and was known to his friends as "Chuck," worked for more than 30 years at Creative Health Services, a behavioral healthcare provider in Pottstown. Known for his sense of humor, Mr. Gallun liked to tell people he met his wife, Priscilla Becroft, in jail - they spotted each other at Holmesburg Prison, where they both worked for the Philadelphia Prisons System.

SHOULD HOURLY workers be able to earn paid sick days? A bill in City Council that mandated businesses to provide paid sick leave was vetoed by Mayor Nutter in 2011, but it may be having a second wind: Council holds hearings Tuesday on an amended bill. Back when the bill was first promoted by Councilmen Darrell Clarke and Bill Greenlee, many business leaders complained that it would be another obstacle to job creation in a city that already has a punishing wage tax to contend with.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO reached a tentative agreement to support increasing lawful migration through a guest-worker program for lower-skilled migrants. The details are obscure, but this agreement is an essential first step for successful immigration reform - a step so far ignored by the Obama administration. Without a guest-worker program, quite simply, immigration reform will fail. Overwhelmingly, immigrants come to the United States because they want jobs, and American businesses have jobs to give.

Pennsylvania's Auditor General Eugene DePasquale announced an audit of the Department of Public Welfare's contract with a Boston company that forced about 2,000 home-care workers in Pennsylvania to go for weeks without pay. The problems followed the consolidation last year of payroll services for about 22,000 workers who care for the disabled in their homes from 37 mostly nonprofit providers across the state to one, Public Partnerships L.L.C....

CALL IT the Grand Imposition. In the last two months, Mayor Nutter's standoff with the city's largest union has gone from a dead-end cold war to a blistering dispute with enormous implications for cities and unions across Pennsylvania. Nutter has asked the state Supreme Court for permission to impose contract terms unilaterally on blue-collar District Council 33, which has been working on the terms of an expired contract since 2009. The case has prompted the state's leading labor and government groups to sound the clarion for their respective causes.

A home health care worker was found guilty in Burlington County Court on Wednesday of sexually assaulting a quadriplegic man who had been in his care and of recording the acts on his cellphone. The verdict followed a two-day trial in which jurors had to decide whether the relationship between Steven E. Young, a 43-year-old nurse from Camden, and his patient was consensual despite testimony from the patient's father that his son cannot speak and struggles to communicate in the most basic fashion.