John Petro

A Healthy Business Climate in NYC

You rarely see this much agreement among New Yorkers: three-in-four city residents believe that workers should be able to take paid sick leave when they need to recover from illness or injury. But nearly half of all workers in the city don't have this basic right. As a result, workers without paid sick leave must choose to either come into work while sick and risk infecting others or to lose a day's pay and risk losing their job.

Today, the New York City Council will introduce a bill that would guarantee every worker in the city the right to earn paid sick leave. They should act quickly to pass it. The impact of this bill, if passed, would be huge: 1.65 million working New Yorkers currently receive no paid sick leave.

While there is broad support for a paid sick leave law among New Yorkers, business organizations continue to oppose it. But if they were to look at the first city in the country to pass a law guaranteeing workers paid sick leave, San Francisco, they would find that their opposition is unwarranted.

Opponents of the Council bill contend that "paid sick leave... could leave some businesses to re-think hiring plans or even worse, lay off workers." But the latest employment data from San Francisco suggest otherwise. In fact, the labor market there is performing better than in neighboring counties that do not have a paid sick leave law.

The recession has hurt job growth across the country and the San Francisco Bay area is no different. Between December 2006 and December 2009, the five counties that surround San Francisco--Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, and Santa Clara--saw total employment drop by 5.2 percent.

But contrary to what opponents of paid sick leave would have expected, employment levels in San Francisco fared better, dropping only 3 percent even in the middle of the worst recession since World War II. In other words, workers were guaranteed paid sick leave and the sky did not, in fact, fall in.

What New York's paid sick leave bill will do is help prevent the spread of contagious disease. Sick workers on the job risk infecting coworkers, customers, and hundreds of other people that the may come into contact with on crowded subways and sidewalks. And workers without paid sick leave are often forced to send sick children to school for fear of losing their job or losing a whole day's pay.

Paid sick leave is a successful policy with a proven track record of success. The evidence from San Francisco is clear: healthy workers and healthy businesses can coexist.

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Posted at 11:20 AM, Mar 25, 2010 in Urban Affairs
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