Word: sicklied
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...What can the Democrats do? They can play politics or be responsible. The political option is to embrace "cut and run"; call for an immediate withdrawal, as Kerry did; and hope the public is so sick of Bush and sick of the war that it will punish the g.o.p. in the fall. But embracing defeat is a risky political strategy, especially for a party not known for its warrior ethic. In fact, the responsible path is the Democrats' only politically plausible choice: they will have to give yet another new Iraqi government one last shot to succeed. This time...
...night hardly fazes Jones after five years on the job, but the grime he has to scrub off dirty wastebaskets still gets to him a little. "Wiping spit is a tough thing to get used to," he says. Jones, 27, earns $6.50 an hour without benefits, vacation time or sick days. His employer, Professional Maintenance, a cleaning contractor, usually schedules him for just four hours a night, five nights a week, so Jones' biweekly paycheck amounts to about $260, before taxes. The monthly rent for his spartan ground-level apartment in a once industrial part of town...
...better alternative. The Massachusetts legislature plans to vote this week on a bill that would give all employees in the state 12 weeks of paid medical leave annually--100% of their pay up to $750 a week and a guarantee to hold their jobs--to care for newborns or sick relatives. If passed, the bill would mandate the most generous paid-leave policy in the U.S.; it is the first of 24 similar proposals pending this year. Family friendly and popular with female voters, most of the bills are enjoying wide, bipartisan support, says Debra Ness, president of the National...
...those 12 weeks of leave with a mandatory payroll tax of about $2 a week. Randy Albelda, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, says companies in the state now spend $370 million annually to support employee leaves by allowing workers to use vacation time or sick days to cover maternity or medical leave. The new paid-leave bill would eliminate much of that expense and could actually reduce other costs. "This will increase retention, and training and turnover are often the highest costs a company has," Albelda says. Steve Grossman, one of the few business owners...
...innovations didn't please every Times solver. "You are sick, sick, sick," goes one of the letters Shortz reads aloud in Wordplay. Another correspondent is polite but perplexed: "This kvetching thing that's going on, I can't seem to get a grasp on it. 'The kvetcher's cry': 'Oy vey'? I don't get it. How is it used? Is it a Northern thing?" But most puzzlers I know are pleased with his work. More than that: he has given fresh life to their daily preoccupation...