First of all, the Seattle City Council is not yet ready to vote on the paid sick day legislation; the Housing, Human Services, Health, & Culture committee meets today, June 22, at 2 p.m., to discuss the details. Committee chair Nick Licata hopes to have the full Council vote on his proposal by August. If passed, it would go into effect a year later, and then businesses, depending on size, would have 90 or 180 days to begin implementing paid sick days for their employees. Businesses with fewer than 250 employees get a longer runway.
Seattle’s proposed legislation is one of a number of moves in cities and states around the country to require businesses of all sizes to provide paid sick leave. HuffPo: “There are active advocacy campaigns in about 20 cities and states, and bills are progressing in a number of states including California and Massachusetts.” Notably, San Francisco passed a requirement in 2006. Connecticut took the state-wide lead this June.
Seattle’s proposal differs from many others in key respects. The ordinance would apply to businesses of all sizes, but in a tiered manner, so that truly small businesses are not unduly burdened. The Seattle Times breaks out the sick day levels:
- A business with 1 to 49 full-time employees would have to provide up to five days of paid sick leave in a year.
- A business with 50 to 249 full-time employees would have to provide up to seven days in a year.
- A business with 250 or more full-time employees would have to provide up to nine days in a year.
- Businesses with more than 1,000 employees would have to provide one hour of paid leave — which might include vacation time — for every 15 hours worked, with at least half the time available for paid sick time.
Crucially, after feedback from small business owners, the proposal preserves the ability of employees to swap shifts, rather than take sick days preferentially. Businesses that already provide paid time off, in hours greater than or equal to sick leave requirements, could count that time as paid sick leave.
Employees accrue sick leave depending upon hours worked, so part-time and full-time workers are covered. The range is from one hour of leave per 50 hours worked for the smallest businesses to one hour per 15 hours for the largest.
The Seattle Coalition for a Healthy Workforce estimates about 190,000 Seattle workers currently do not get sick days, that would. (The 2002 census counted almost 65,000 businesses in Seattle.)
Despite employers’ fears about abuse of sick day leave, nationally, the average actual sick days taken is 3 days annually, rather than the maximum. In San Francisco, “Average use across all industries was 3.3 days, with an average of 1.9 days in the leisure and hospitality sector – in which restaurants and bars provide the majority of employment.” PubliCola reports that in San Francisco, three years after implementation, “68 percent of all employers, and 66 percent of hotel and food service employers, support the ordinance.”
A Connecticut study on the costs of extending sick leave (to firms with 50 employees or more) pegged the expense as .05 percent of total sales–without taking into consideration the costs associated with workers showing up sick, and spreading the flu, for instance, around the workplace.
Dr. Jeff Duchin (Communicable Disease & Immunizations, Public Health, Seattle & King County) notes that: “In King County, from 2006 to 2010 approximately 30 percent of recent food borne illness outbreaks (almost all due to norovirus) were linked to food handlers who worked while ill.”
