City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is trying to reach a compromise on a contentious bill that would require businesses to provide their employees with at least five paid sick days a year, The Post has learned.
The move came after defiant council members, under pressure from union advocates, were contemplating moving the bill to a full council vote without her approval.
Quinn — worried that such an edict could hurt small businesses — had blocked the measure.
“This way, she has some input,” one source said.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a deal is the minimum number of employees that a business would have to employ to be covered by the new legislation.
Advocates are pushing for five as the floor, a number Quinn won’t accept.
On the flip side, the advocates have flatly rejected the idea of following the example of Connecticut and limiting coverage to companies with 50 or more workers.
Quinn signaled, during a lengthy but polite hearing on the issue at City Hall yesterday, that she was prepared to move to middle ground .
“The legislation, in its form being discussed today, is not a version of paid sick leave that I can support at this time,” she said.
“For me, it’s not a question if we need paid sick leave; it’s a question of when and how that will happen.”
Quinn, a mayoral candidate, has been getting hammered by rivals on the campaign trail who accuse her of not standing up for “social justice.”
Two of them — Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and former Comptroller Bill Thompson — kept up the assault in testimony at the hearing.
“I ask Speaker Quinn to tear down this obstacle to economic justice,” said Thompson.
De Blasio questioned whether the recent flu epidemic would have been as bad had the legislation been in place last year and uncovered workers stayed home sick instead of going in to earn their paychecks.
“Every New Yorker in every borough deserves paid sick leave,” de Blasio said.
He later told The Post that both Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., had enacted similar legislation using the five-employee figure as the standard.
“Fifty, that’s absolutely unacceptable,” he declared. “Some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the city are trying to stop this.”
There was also disagreement on the cost to employers, even though the council itself estimated it at between 1.1 and 1.8 percent of total compensation.
The business-backed Employment Policies Institute said a sick-pay mandate would reduce city wages, benefits and jobs, based on what happened in other states.