Much is being said in the media from all sides about the Paid Sick Leave bill, which would require New York City employers to provide a specific package of paid sick-leave benefits to their employees — and about the fact that a majority of City Council members support this bill.
In fact, there is strong opposition in the council as well. I represent that viewpoint. And I’m supportive of Speaker Christine Quinn and other colleagues who’ve thus far withheld support for this bill. I don’t speak for them, but we seem to be in general agreement that this bill, in this economy, does more harm to small businesses and small-business employment than it does to advance the laudable goal of providing paid sick leave to hardworking breadwinners.
The case against the bill starts with a 2010 Ernst & Young study, which found that nearly 90 percent of the city’s workforce already gets paid sick leave. The employers that don’t offer it are concentrated in a few sectors that tend to have low profit margins, and must hire replacement workers to cover absentees.
Typically, businesses in these sectors handle illness with an informal barter system, where employees can exchange shifts when they or a family member are ill. This is not something that the government can effectively regulate.
Indeed, every business and industry has a unique approach to its employment and benefit policies. Bills like this necessarily take a “one size fits all” approach that can only harm New York City’s fragile, recovering economy.
Then there’s the question of who would enforce this mandate. The city doesn’t have a Labor Department or similar agency that could readily take on this administrative duty.
So it would fall to the courts: Employees would have to sue their employer to secure compliance with the law. But litigation (and the fear of it) is already a serious problem in our city’s business climate.
Then, too, the mandate may interfere with existing employment policies, collective-bargaining contracts and/or agreements that allow leave for different reasons than in the bill.
As others have pointed out, a growing number of employers in this city are small startups, many of them owned by women, minorities and immigrants. The extra costs of the paid-sick-leave mandate would plainly hit these vulnerable populations harder than most.
All this, when New York City is trying to attract and retain growing small businesses and other job-creators. It’s a bad time for city government to adopt new measures that instead encourage entrepreneurs to build their businesses elsewhere, in more welcoming jurisdictions.
When I travel my district, my unemployed constituents decry the lack of jobs while small-business owners decry the chilling effect of government mandates and regulations. This mandate wouldn’t help either group.
The proponents of this bill have noble intentions, but they want city government to tackle a problem it’s ill-equipped to handle. Worse, they’d be extending benefits to a few workers at the expense of actual jobs for too many others.
James F. Gennaro (D-Queens) is in his third term on the City Council.