On July 1, the Earned Sick Time law went into effect in Massachusetts, giving all workers the right to earn forty hours of sick time off each calendar year. Before the law went into effect, almost a million people, or some one in every three workers, received no sick time at their jobs.

No longer will a parent with a job have to decide whether to stay home to take care of a sick child or a relative and lose a day’s pay or go to work and not be there for the child or relative because he or she can’t afford to lose that pay.

This law is basic decency. This is family values happening at our jobs. This is enabling those who work for hourly wages, few of whom have ever had sick time on the job, to earn what most salaried employees get with their employment: paid time off when they or their children or their relatives are sick and need care.

Under the new law, workers in businesses with fewer than eleven employees are entitled to sick time off, but it will be unpaid leave. Part-time workers may earn sick time, too: They will get one hour of sick time for every thirty hours worked, up to a maximum of forty hours a year.

So how did this law get passed? For eight years, the leadership in the Legislature had refused to allow a vote on proposals mandating earned sick time for all workers.

A coalition called Raise Up Massachusetts, made up of numerous community, labor, and religious based groups, changed this by collecting 365,000 voter signatures that would put on the ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and put earned sick time into law.

After the signatures were collected, theLegislature took notice and moved to raise the minimum wage significantly, up to $11 an hour over three years, but the legislative leadership again refused to act on earned sick time. So Raise Up Massachusetts filed the signatures and the proposal became Question 4 on last fall’s ballot. Much voter education work was done – volunteers knocked on some 370,000 doors, reached 70,000 voters by phone and 30,000 at their religious services – and Question 4 won, 59 percent to 41 percent.

Cedrick Powell of Dorchester works for a health care company as a personal care attendant (PCA) taking care of elderly and inform people. Before the law took effect, Powell, said, he found himself in a quandary if he had a cold. If he went to work, he was putting the health of his patients at risk; if he missed work, he lost a day’s pay and fell behind on his bills. “Now I can take time,” he said, “to nurse myself or my children back into good health so that tomorrow I can be 100 percent to get back to work.”

The heroes of this story are the 5,000 volunteers from community groups, labor unions, and faith-based organizations who collected the signatures that in the end put earned sick time into law in Massachusetts.

Now, almost a million workers have more dignity and decency with their jobs than they had before July 1. That’s a good thing and I am proud that my group worked so hard with so many others to make earned sick time a reality.

Lew Finfer is a Dorchester resident and the director of Massachusetts Communities Action Network, which is based in Dorchester.