States Consider Paid Sick Leave

But according to the State Net database, several states, including such large population centers as CALIFORNIA, NEW YORK, PENNSYLVANIA and OHIO, are now considering bills to require employers to provide their workers with a minimum number of paid sick days each year. To date, at least 12 states overall have introduced such bills this year. At least one of those measures, FLORIDA SB 152 has already died a quick death in committee. Another, CONNECTICUT SB 217, was approved by the Senate but failed to get through the House before the session adjourned. Other bills remain at least technically alive in ALASKA, MISSOURI, MAINE, NORTH CAROLINA, TENNESSEE and VERMONT.

One proposal that is definitely alive and kicking is CALIFORNIA Assembly Bill 2716. Based on a statute adopted in San Francisco in 2006, AB 2716 would require Golden State employers to give their workers one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours they work, up to five days in a calendar year for businesses with 10 or fewer employees and nine days for larger companies. The measure has already cleared the Assembly and the Senate Committee on Labor and Industrial Relations, and is now with the Senate Committee on Appropriations, where it is also expected to pass. Most observers expect the bill to eventually make its way to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who has so far not taken a position on the proposal.

A similar measure — HB 536, which would require employers to grant their employees a maximum of seven paid sick days annually — is expected to go before voters in OHIO later this year. The Buckeye State House considered but ultimately did not vote on that proposal before the session closed on May 8. The bill's primary supporter, a coalition of more than 200 labor groups and other organizations called Ohioans for Healthy Families (OHF), is now working to gather the 121,000 signatures necessary to get it on the November ballot.

The deadline for that is August 6, but OHF spokesperson Dale Butland says they have already collected over 160,000 signatures, and he anticipates they will ultimately turn in more than 200,000. "There is absolutely no question that this will get onto the November ballot," Butland says. If so, it appears to have a good chance of passing. A June 4 Quinnipiac University poll showed 70 percent of voters support the measure. Butland notes that several other polls have shown similar results. "This is an idea whose time has come," he says.

Not everyone agrees with him on that. Business groups like the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which claims 350,000 members nationwide, say proposals like those in OHIO and CALIFORNIA will cost employers billions of dollars in new employee expenses, which will ultimately lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. A recent NFIB study in CALIFORNIA, for example, predicts that AB 2716 will impose $4.6 billion in new direct costs on Golden State businesses, and cost another $59.3 billion in lost sales over the law's first five years. That, the study says, will force employers to cut at least 370,000 jobs. Over 36 percent of those losses, they say, will come in companies with fewer than 100 employees.

John Kabateck, executive director of NFIB/California, says lawmakers should look at those numbers before "asking small businesses to spend what they don't have." Kabateck contends that most of the 23,000 CALIFORNIA employers that belong to NFIB already offer their workers some form of flexible scheduling that fits the kind of business they are in. He adds that, while well-meaning, measures like AB 2716 ultimately hurt the very people they are trying to help, workers in service sector jobs that are the most likely to get cut when small business owners face a sudden spike in their costs.

"We're already facing record-high unemployment and a $15 billion budget deficit," Kabateck says. "This is a particularly bad time to impose an employer mandate like this one that will cost so much and eliminate so many jobs."

Dick Castner, the executive director for the Western Region of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, echoes that thought, saying "We don't have a problem at all with paid sick leave, but we do think it should be between the employer and the employee to work out, with no government mandate."

But paid sick leave supporters point to other studies that show allowing workers to stay home when they are ill actually helps a company's bottom line by reducing employee turnover and making it less likely that sick employees will infect others in the workplace. A study by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), for instance, says that AB 2716 will actually save CALIFORNIA businesses more than $1 billion each year. That is why, they say, every other industrial nation in the world already allows sick leave as part of its basic labor policy.

So why so such a huge difference of opinion on what paid sick leave actually means to a company's ledger sheet? Ohioans for Healthy Families' Dale Butland says studies like the NFIB report too often presume that workers will automatically use every bit of available sick leave they have each year. But Butland says that IWPRs 2004 National Health Interview Survey shows that "more than half of the workers with sick leave never use a single day of that time off."

Jim Lazarus, Senior Vice President of Public Policy with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, says it is too early to say whether that city's first-in-the-nation paid sick leave policy has hurt or helped its employers. He says that while "illict sick leave use is the number one fear among most employers," they have not received many complaints from their members. Part of that, he says, could be that "90 percent of the businesses in San Francisco already had paid sick leave" before the law went into effect. He says that neither the county nor the SF chamber are tracking the results yet, though that could change in the future.

What happens if AB 2716 gets to Schwarzenegger is unclear, although the NFIBs Kabateck says he expects the governor will veto it. "This governor steadfastly supports preserving jobs in CALIFORNIA," Kabateck says.

But The U.S. Chamber's Castner says businesses must be ready to roll with whatever happens in OHIO, CALIFORNIA or anywhere else. "You pretty much have to suck it up," he says. "There really is no way to oppose this without looking like you are hard hearted." But be that as it may, Castner also predicts that many companies in those two states will soon cut back on other employee benefits, such as health care and pay raises, to compensate for the additional costs of sick leave. He also notes that the push for sick leave is likely to get stronger at both the state and federal level if Democrats do well in the November elections.

OHFs Butland concurs, noting Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama supports similar legislation at the federal level. But he also points out that the polls show a large majority of Republicans support the OHIO measure. The reason, he says, is simple.

"Everybody gets sick," he says. "This really isn't a party issue."
— By RICH EHISEN