Nebraska voters will likely have the chance this year to decide whether to require the state's employers to provide workers with paid sick leave after organizers behind the petition drive turned in more than 138,000 signatures to election officials Thursday.
After a yearlong signature drive, the advocates behind the Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans campaign turned in far more signatures than they needed to crack November's ballot and are "very confident" their initiative will go before voters this fall, said Jo Giles, the executive director of the Women's Fund of Omaha and a formal sponsor of the effort.
"Today, we are one step closer to ensuring all working Nebraskans can earn and use paid sick time when they need it — and that makes today a day of celebration," Giles told supporters and the press at a news conference Thursday morning. "We are so excited about this day, but we know that there is more work to do.
"We will keep organizing. We will keep advocating for families in Nebraska. And, most importantly, we will do this work together."
For the organizers behind the initiative, though, the hardest part is over.
The group needed to collect and turn in valid signatures from 7% of Nebraska's registered voters, or roughly 87,000 voters. The group also needed signatures from 5% of voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
Around 15% to 30% of petition signatures are typically invalidated, often because signees aren't registered to vote or fail to date their signatures, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bob Evnen's office said. But the organizers behind Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans turned in about 51,000 more signatures than they needed.
Evnen's office will spend a few days paginating the petitions organizers turned in Thursday before sending them to county election offices for signature verification, a process the county offices have 40 days to complete.
If state and county election officials determine the group collected enough valid signatures — and if voters approve the sick leave proposal in November — the measure would require employers with fewer than 20 workers to offer at least five days of paid sick leave per year, or one hour for every 30 hours worked.
Employers with 20 or more workers would have to offer at least seven days per year. The policy would take effect in the state in October 2025.
"I appreciate that the paid sick leave initiative protects small businesses by setting a lower minimum on the earned time than larger companies (and) that it would give small-business owners like me time between when Nebraska voters hopefully pass this initiative and before the requirement starts," said Amelia Rosser, who owns Sheelytown Market, a plant store and local foods market in Omaha.
"The return on investment of taking care of my employees is well worth it," said Rosser, who spoke at Thursday's news conference at the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel, which houses the Secretary of State's election office. "To keep Nebraska businesses thriving for the next generation, we need to support our workers."
Organizers cast the measure Thursday as one that would benefit "everyone" by providing protections for workers who might otherwise feel obligated to show up to work sick.
The baseline of paid sick days — which at least 250,000 workers in the state don't have — would reduce the spread of illness, improve workplace morale and reduce turnover, said Sue Martin, the president of the state AFL-CIO, a union that represents 23,000 workers across Nebraska.
Nebraska would join , as territories that have mandatory paid sick leave laws.
Colorado is the only state that borders Nebraska and has such a law in place. and  have turned in signatures to put similar measures on the ballot in those states this year.
In Nebraska, the campaign to put the issue to voters has raised more than $2.9 million since it launched last June, including more than $1.9 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a D.C.-based nonprofit group known to fund progressive causes, including in Nebraska, where it helped put an increase in the state minimum wage on the 2022 ballot.
The Fairness Project and Nebraska Appleseed, a criminal and social justice advocacy group, have each poured more than $200,000 into the campaign, according to finance disclosure filings.
Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans has spent around $2.6 million as of May 31, when the latest campaign finance disclosure period ended.
In addition to national donors, though, the campaign championing paid sick leave — a policy that organizers emphasize is "commonsense" — has drawn the support of the apolitical, including Norberto Sanchez, a 34-year-old cattle ranch hand from central Nebraska who drove two hours to attend Thursday morning's turn-in event at the Cornhusker.
A single father of a high school-aged daughter, Sanchez said he had been following the campaign for nearly a year and, for a while, feared that he was putting his faith in a doomed effort.
"Since I'm always working on the farm, I only got to meet them a few times," Sanchez said of fellow paid sick leave advocates, a few dozen of whom attended Thursday's gathering. "So the first time I saw these people, it was great because I didn't know how many were involved.
"For a minute, I thought it was only, like, six of us," he said. "I was like, 'I don't think this is gonna work out.'"
By the time he took the podium Thursday, things had changed.
Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans coalition members Noel Tonniges of Omaha (right) and Sierra Edmisten of Hastings (left) deliver boxes of signed petitions to the Secretary of State's Office at the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln on Thursday. Petition organizers turned in 138,000 signatures.
Sierra Edmisten of Hastings (left) high-fives Jo Giles, executive director of the Women’s Fund of Omaha, after signing the affidavit for filing petition pages at the Nebraska Secretary of State's Office on Thursday.
Paid Sick Leave Nebraska coalition advocates carry boxes of petitions into the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel on Thursday. Petition organizers turned in 138,000 signatures to the Secretary of State.
Sierra Edmisten of Hastings with the Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans campaign shows a copy of an affidavit for filing petition pages. Organizers turned in 138,000 signatures at the Secretary of State’s office on Thursday.
Farm and ranch worker Norberto Sanchez (right) speaks during a Thursday press conference held by the petition campaign to require Nebraska employers to provide workers with paid sick leave.