Boxing in the Big Apple: SF Chamber of Commerce delivers knockout blow to opponents of paid sick days

The Wall Street Journal examines a budgetary boxing match between opponents and advocates of legislation to ensure New York City workers can earn paid sick days on the job. The question: How much will it cost? In one corner: the New York City Chamber of Commerce, which says the measure will cost billions. In the other: the legislation’s advocates and supporters. Their estimates are less than 10% of the Chamber’s low-end estimate.

In early rounds the Chamber comes out swinging, estimating the bill cost to NYC businesses at $3 to $3.5 billion per year. Quick jabs from businesses owners like Marc Murphy, who says it would cost his company $200,000 a year, seem to put paid sick days supporters on their heels.

But they battle back, citing a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report from 2009, which estimates the average of cost of sick leave per hour in the private sector was just 23 cents. As the bell rings, they land a stinging blow to the restaurant and service industry — the group most vehemently opposed to the legislation — by noting their costs are even lower: just 8 cents per hour.

It’s a short fight with no definitive winner, so the Journal calls in a referee: the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which also (unsuccessfully) opposed similar legislation in that city a few years ago. Their verdict: After three years of living and working with a minimum paid sick days standard, the S.F. Chamber cannot find any strong opposition among it members — even during the Great Recession.

According to S.F. Chamber Senior Vice President Jim Lazarus, the burden on business has been minimal:

“The biggest impact was on small retailers and the restaurant industry,” he says. “It has not been a huge issue that we have heard from our members about.”

The WSJ writes:

“Businesses in San Francisco are not quiet when local laws hit their bottom line. City mandates for minimum wage and health-care coverage have drawn yowls of pain from members of the business group, Lazarus says. But compliance with the sick-leave law hasn’t not galvanized a similar level of opposition from San Francisco employers. ‘I don’t think it’s quite on the minds of employers,’ he says.”

Score this bout a unanimous victory for workers and their families.

WAFLC Newsletter

Highlights from the most recent Washington Family Leave Coalition Newsletter

Coalition trip to DC: Advancing workplace policies for Washington families

A group of Washington citizens are just back from a jampacked 2-day trip to “the other Washington” led by the Economic Opportunity Institute’s Marilyn Watkins, where they urged members of the state’s Congressional delegation to take action on paid family leave and paid sick days. | More

Washington Working Women 2010: Wage equality and family-friendly benefits are the best Mother’s Day gift

EOI’s latest report, Washington’s Working Women 2010, notes the gulf separating men’s and women’s earnings has expanded over the past two decades. But women not only earn lower wages than their male counterparts – they are also less likely than men to receive benefits from their employers, and more likely to work part time or take breaks from employment for family care. | More

Seattle Healthy Workforce kickoff event

Learn more about a proposed paid sick days for Seattle event. | More

News coverage

Read the full newsletter

NPR: Obama Budget Pushes Paid Leave Programs

When citizen delegates from Washington State converged in Washington DC to urge their representatives to take action on paid family leave and paid sick days, Selena Allen, of Tacoma (whose story we’ve profiled before), and EOI Policy Director Marilyn Watkins were interviewed by NPR reporter Jennifer Ludden:

For millions of Americans, a major illness or family crisis means time off work with no pay. In recent years, several states have passed their own paid leave programs. Half a dozen more are trying but are largely stalled by the bad economy. Now, the Obama administration’s proposed budget aims to encourage states to push ahead.

Paid leave would help people like Selena Allen of Tacoma, Wash. When she found out she was pregnant with her second child, Allen started saving all her vacation and sick days. She hoarded away enough to take one month of maternity leave. Then her son was born a month and a half early. Allen, who worked at a nonprofit at the time, decided she simply couldn’t afford to take any more time off — time that would have been unpaid. She postponed her maternity leave and returned to work a painful four days after giving birth.

California enacted a paid family leave law in 2002, and New Jersey followed suit in 2008. And in 2007, Washington state made headlines when it passed a paid parental leave law. The law would provide new parents up to $250 a week for up to five weeks. Advocates wanted it to include other kinds of family leave, such as major illness, and still hope to broaden it eventually.

But the bigger dilemma was that lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to fund the program. Unlike California and New Jersey, Washington does not have an existing disability insurance program, so it had to create a funding mechanism from scratch. The state set up a task force to do that. Then, says task force member Marilyn Watkins, of the Economic Opportunity Institute, the recession hit.

“A new program, with a new source of funding, in the face of cutting so many other programs, was just not a feasible situation,” Watkins says. Washington state’s paid leave program has been put on hold until 2012, but Watkins hopes the federal government can rescue it sooner.

Read (or listen to) the full story here

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