Yesterday, the City Council unveiled a revised bill that would require private employers to offer paid sick days for employees, and business owners were not satisfied with the changes. "If the council considers paid sick days as a moral imperative on par with unemployment insurance or Social Security, where everyone pays into the system, then help our business community pay for it," Jack Friedman, executive director of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, told the Council. A heated debate ensued that made it clear the bill wouldn't be passed in its current form.
Most of the City Council, and unions such as Working Families Party, are backing the bill full-force. The bill had already been revised to meet business owners halfway, by defining "small businesses" as having fewer than 20 employees, rather than 10 or fewer. "Allowing staff to take time off when they're sick is a basic right and expectation. A sick employee resents being at work, is not thinking, is not performing their job duties, and depresses overall staff morale," Samira Rajan, CEO of the Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union, testified to the Council.
Business owners countered by proposing a system under which all employees would pay into a cooperative system to help companies afford the cost of the measure, and asked for the city to offer other tax breaks to businesses. "Ultimately, we know the bill will be passed. But we just want to ensure it is something we can live with," said Linda Baran, president and CEO of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce (SIEDC), one of the opposing groups. Mayor Bloomberg hasn't spoken out publicly on the initiative, but gave an indication of his temperature by not sending any representative to yesterday's hearing, though it could be his representative called in sick that day.
