"Economic headlines for New Mexico have rarely been good in recent months. In November and December, the state led the nation in highest unemployment rate. In January, New Mexico improved, but only to 49th. Stories abound of people moving out of the state to states with better economic climate."
Veronica Garcia, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, said losing wages to recover from an illness or care for a child becomes more threatening when monthly earnings are already low.
In the next legislative session, New Mexico Voices for Children plans to lobby lawmakers for a bill requiring paid sick leave for all private sector workers in the state. (The group says nearly all public sector workers have paid sick leave.) Executive director Veronica C. García says “no parent should ever have to make the terrible choice between paying their bills and caring for a sick child.”
New Mexico has the lowest rate in the nation of workers with paid sick leave, according to New Mexico Voices for Children, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advocating for policies to improve the health and well-being of New Mexico’s children, families and communities.
One of the hardest decisions to make is whether to stay home sick and not draw a paycheck, or go to work sick and get paid. In New Mexico, nearly half of all employees have to make that decision when they get sick.
Many families already struggle to put food on the table, said Executive Director Veronica Garcia. “New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty in the nation, the highest unemployment rate and the third-highest child food insecurity rate,” Garcia said in a statement. “Why would we do anything that could make child poverty and hunger worse?”
Bill Jordan, a lobbyist for New Mexico Voices for Children, says the bill would take away about $6,000 a year from a Santa Fe worker now making $22,000. “It’s a good way to increase poverty,” Jordan said.
Perhaps the harshest and most valid criticism of Gov. Susana Martinez’s State of the State speech wasn’t so much for what she said as what she didn’t say. She made no mention of child poverty in New Mexico.
The annual scorecard found that more New Mexico children lived with parents who lacked full-time employment in 2014 than those in 2008—35 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Amber Wallin, director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which published the 72-page report, said poverty holds back the state’s children.
"Once upon a time, in a cafe in Ramallah, or somewhere in the West Bank, I was trying to explain to some young fellow where it was that I was from in the United States. Mexico? NEW Mexico? Never heard of this. Where was that? I drew a map. Even I can draw a map of the Southwest and western Plains. Kansas, New Mexico, etc., how tough is that?"