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Should Seattle Mandate Paid Sick Leave?

May 3, 2011

The city of Seattle is considering an ordinance that would require all employers to provide paid sick leave.

City council member Nick Licata, who’s sponsoring the proposal, argues that it will improve public health and improve productivity; Washington Restaurant Association President & CEO Anthony Anton argues that mandating paid sick leave will hurt small businesses.

Seattle City Council Member Nick Licata

It’s hard to believe it was once normal for young children to go to work instead of school, for people to work from dawn to dusk without overtime pay, and for our food to be riddled with contaminants.

Those conditions changed because citizens have supported minimum wages, food inspections, safe working conditions and other standards for employees and workplaces. There seems to be a common-sense belief that meeting  minimum safety standards makes for more productive and efficient workplaces.

Voters and public officials in a Milwaukee, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have taken the next logical step in promoting healthy and safe work environments by establishing standards for paid sick days in their cities, ensuring that employers provide  a minimum amount of paid time off for employees to take care of themselves or their sick family members.

A coalition of more than 50 local community, business, and labor organizations is bringing this issue before Seattle. We should give it due consideration by  asking the following questions.

• Is it needed?

Probably the 190,000 people working in Seattle without paid sick leave think so. Many of these folks work in the food and health industries. If they get sick and don’t have paid sick leave, they go to work sick handling your food, your grocery bag, or your personal items in your home while caring for your loved ones. Surveys reveal that one in four grocery workers report coming to work sick when they don’t have paid sick leave.

Overall, 78% of accommodation and food service workers, about half of retail workers and one fourth of health care workers don’t earn paid sick days.

Without paid sick days, a parent must decide on whether to lose pay to stay with a sick  child, or send the child off to day care or school, where they will most likely infect other children.

Sick people coming in to contact with the public, whether they are in the service industry or attending schools, endanger the health of everyone by potentially spreading contagious diseases. As a public health policy they should remain home – and they should still be able to make their rent and pay their bills.

What are the objections?

The most obvious is additional costs for those businesses that don’t already provide paid leave. Luckily there is some evidence as to the effect of implementing a city-wide paid sick day policy.

San Francisco’s paid sick leave ordinance has been in place since February 2007. An evaluation of it showed that since it was enacted, San Francisco has had a stronger job market than the surrounding counties and the state as a whole, including in the restaurant

industry, which was most impacted by the ordinance. Surprisingly. two-thirds of the 727 employers surveyed in San Francisco indicated they supported the measure.

Another concern is that it could be abused by the employees. The same evaluation  found that the typical worker used only three days of paid sick leave a year, and 25 percent of the employees with access to paid sick leave didn’t use it at all.

When employees come to work sick it takes them longer to recover and they risk passing their illnesses along to coworkers, resulting in lower productivity.  These workplaces have lower turnover, less absenteeism, higher morale and greater customer satisfaction.

 

Anthony Anton, CEO and President of the Washington Restaurant Association

In 2010 Seattle restaurants provided more than 37,000 jobs throughout the city, paying more than $765 million in wages. During this period of economic recovery, those jobs matter greatly to employees, employers and the city. That’s why the looming proposal requiring restaurants to provide paid sick leave is particularly daunting for many of the city’s restaurants—93 percent of which are small businesses.

These owners already are operating on super-slim profit margins—somewhere in the neighborhood of five percent, on average. Make no mistake about it: the vast majority of Seattle restaurant operators aren’t raking in loads of profit. So when faced with the prospect of a new requirement that could require a potential outlay of between $65,000 and $175,000 annually, you can understand why the city’s restaurant operators are pretty alarmed right now. For every $1,000 increase in the cost of doing business, a restaurant needs an additional $20,000 in sales just to break even. In the economic climate our small businesses are facing, a new requirement could cost jobs and benefits.

But let’s back up for a minute and address an important aspect of this debate. “What about public health and the safety of restaurant employees?” That’s what the proponents of this proposal are asking. And frankly, it’s a fair question. Truthfully, nothing is as important to restaurants as the safety of their customers and employees. If the wellbeing of either is compromised in a restaurant setting, the restaurant has failed at its most basic function.

Fortunately, state and county health laws prevent sick employees from working in and around restaurant kitchens. Accordingly, statistics from the Washington State Department of Health illustrate that these policies are working. Since 1994, reports of food-borne illness outbreaks have declined steadily, and fewer than 20 confirmed cases of food-borne illness were reported in 2010, out of the 13,000 restaurants in Washington state. Extrapolated for Seattle, that figure becomes much lower. The bottom line is that it takes only one food-borne illness outbreak to destroy a restaurant operator’s livelihood and future. That risk weighs heavily on the mind of all restaurant operators, and it’s not a threat that any of them takes lightly.

We’re also sensitive to concerns about how restaurant employees are affected financially by time away from work. The men and women who work in our restaurants are invaluable members of our operations. For many of them, this industry’s flexibility is what attracted them to the field in the first place. Restaurants are well situated for “shift-swapping,” and employees work together constantly to trade shifts, rearrange schedules, pick up extra hours and cover for each other when need be. This system automatically provides workers with a route for retaining the pay they depend on to meet their financial obligations.

The restaurant industry will remain engaged in this debate. The questions being asked are important ones, and we believe strongly that the outcome should take into account what is at stake on both sides of the issue.

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PubliCola ThinkTank



Your Comments

  • Anonymous

    One thing that I don’t remember being mentioned yet:

    Is there a chance, whether intentional or not, that this could keep restaurant employees from seeking help from the unions? It might be a smart move for those that fear unions to offer first what a union might offer later.

    And an hour of preventive dental care beats using a whole sick day for tooth pain.

  • Anonymous

    Mr. Anton’s use of “foodborn illness” statistics is a red herring. Many illnesses passed on by restaraunt staff do not fall into this category and are probably completely untracked by any agency. Common cold and flu viruses, staph, and many other infections are likely not tracked as “foodborn” per se. While it is illegal for employees to work when ill I’m sure it happens in many cases because they simply can’t afford to lose a day’s wages. They take pills to cover symptoms and go to work.

  • Big Jim Slade

    “Many illnesses passed on by restaraunt staff do not fall into this category and are probably completely untracked by any agency. Common cold and flu viruses, staph, and many other infections are likely not tracked as “foodborn” per se.”

    Not true. In King County foodborne illness reports are initiated by citizenry and are often prompted by symptoms that could be flu. All are investigated, regardless of what the final cause might be.

    That said I do agree that using foodborne illness prevention in this debate is a red herring. And I do not believe that mandating paid sick leave is a particularly good idea nor one that the City should be wasting time on. Many restaurant jobs by their very nature are part-time or late hours with high turnover of personnel. I just don’t see this as a problem that the industry can’t solve by itself.

  • TBF

    This seems to be a sound and well intentioned idea. But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of study and information behind it. Like many well intentioned ideas, especially from the EOI, this seems like it could be something that just polls well that someone can get a quick political win on. Burbank lost badly on his Latte Tax idea, so now he comes forward with this?

    But, maybe EOI has hit on a good idea and has actually done their homework this time (these are the same people who missed the added tax on small businesses that helped lead to the downfall of 1098, an otherwise great idea, but since they didn’t understand taxes or small business, they missed how 1098 would actually work).

    Council needs to consider the following before we move forward:

    How much will enforcement cost the City, how much will the plan cost businesses?

    Since employers look at employee compensation as one cost – meaning benefits and pay all equal the cost of labor – will mandating this one benefit just result in other benefits and wages being cut? After all, total labor cost can only be a certain percentage of income, or the business fails. The other possibility is the cost of this benefit in some businesses like grocery stores just leads to higher prices. In the end, it could have the unintended effect of lowering wages for the least paid employees, and raising prices of an essential good like food – not exactly something good for the same people this is trying to help.

    We should also consider which benefits employees want. Did the proponents of this proposal poll employees to find out what those are? Benefits include all sorts of things, from health care, retirement, educational matching funds, paid time off, paid sick days, employee meals, shift drinks, even employee trips. Are paid sick days the most important of these, and is this what employees are demanding? If not, what is? Should every business have to offer the same benefits, or is there a package of benefits businesses should choose from depending on what their employees want?

    Should we be thinking bigger? Maybe there is a package of benefits we should require businesses to offer – when San Francisco passed their Sick Leave law, they also mandated health insurance and raised the minimum wage. Can we do that here? Now? Is this where EOI wants to go? Why not follow San Francisco’s lead and raise the minimum wage and require health insurance now as well?

    We should also be looking into how the City could help defray the costs of some of the benefits – can employers access the City’s pension fund? Can the City help pool employees so there can be cheaper health insurance employers can offer? If so, are these benefits more important than sick days?

    Finally – is this even something the City should be addressing, or is this an issue that should be dealt with at the State level – one for Labor and Industries vs. Licata’s Housing, Human Services, Health, & Culture committee? Seems like a very odd committee to be presenting this ordinance.

    This could be a great thing for City workers, or not so great. Seems like it needs some study before it moves forward.

  • Fran

    I fail to see what this has to do with the Deep Bore Tunnel. Please stay on topic.

  • redherringplussome

    According to a proponent’s study, 87.5% of workers in San Francisco still go to work sick. So the ordinance there didn’t seem to help this problem.

  • gohuskies

    If the workers on the dbt project get all this sick leave, does that make it more likely that there will be cost overruns?

  • Anonymous

    Anyone know if Hepatitis A shots are mandatory, or paid for, or encouraged?
    Should be one or all of those for food handlers.

  • Godwin

    Hey Anthony Anton: I’m tired of catching virsus from your associate business’ employees because they cannot afford to take a day off due to sickness. Maybe having the county Health Department fine owners for allowing sick and contagious employees to be at work touching and being around food preparation would get your attention. And maybe then employers who offer sick pay would out compete those who don’t for qualified help. I spent years in the industry, so I know how you owners typically operate.

  • Anonymous

    The numbers from the Restaurant Association guy are ludicrously low. Take norovirus, for example – it’s a real treat. According to the CDC, symptoms include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea; it is highly contagious, passed via contaminated food and by sick people. Over 21 million Americans got it last year alone — half of those cases were from ill food service workers.

    What the Restaurant Association won’t tell you is that only nursing homes, daycares, schools and skilled nursing facilities are required to report norovirus outbreaks to our local health department. And they do happen – when norovirus hit the Seattle Yacht Club a couple of months ago, over 150 people got sick: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014455135_yachtclub11m.html.

    As for foodborne illness closing a business, give me a break. When was the last time you heard about someone getting friends and family to boycott some place where they got sick after eating there? There are always new customers, even if a few of the old ones won’t come back.

  • redherringplussome

    So did norovirus rates go down in SF over the past three years since their mandatory sick days law went into effect? If the law is effective at keeping restaurant workers from spreading norovirus, and half of norovirus cases come from restaurant workers, then there should be a measurable drop in norovirus rates in SF. Right? If not, is this law the way to get at the problem?

  • Anonymous

    Tell me how this works.
    Nobody knows it’s Norovirus until the tests come back, and it tends to be the testing facility who has the responsibility to report these things. King County says all suspected cases are to be reported immediately.

    By the testing facility.

  • Anonymous

    To clarify:
    King County doesn’t name this bug. They just say “suspected food borne illness”.

    That isn’t enough to go on for the testing facility, because they don’t know the origin.
    Only the provider does, and he or she is not the one tasked to do this.

    And so much testing is collected at one place, then farmed out. And that facility my not feel it’s their responsibity to report it. And even if they do, the original facility may rather not report than to give out patient information to some random person on the phone requesting that info, even if they say they are from the state lab.
    I love a Giardia troph as much as the next guy, but I’m not willing to give up private info easily.
    This is a problem. Waterboard me, and I’ll talk. Maybe.

  • Anonymous

    If restaurant, grocery, and retail workers (who are most likely not to get any paid sick time) never show up to work sick, then it shouldn’t be a problem for their employers to have paid sick leave, because no one will use it. So there’s no reason for these business owners to object. Unless of course, people *are* showing up to work sick.

  • Comment

    Having had a daughter that recently was infected with Salmonella, here is the exact process that we went through:

    – Went to the ER; they thought it was flu, sent home

    – Two days later, went to our pediatrician. Stool sample. Four days later, positive for Salmonella

    – Sample results forwarded to King County Health Department. King County Health called us to investigate

    – Sample forwarded by King County to State of Washington for testing and typing on the strain of Salmonella (it may have been genetic testing)

    – State of Washington called us to investigate. We allowed them access to personal records (e.g., what we bought and where, and when we ate it)

    – State of Washington identified the source (because of a whole bunch of other people that had the same type of Salmonella bug and had eaten the same thing)

    – State of Washington took action with source of contamination

    Don’t know if all food borne illnesses follow the same trajectory, but it is a data point for you. I was pretty happy that we had a testing and control function provided by the government. Otherwise, we would have never know how it was contracted (just thought I’d throw in a “your tax dollars at work” plug).

    Take care,

  • Anonymous

    I think Salmonella is a named bug for King County.

    And the typing the state did: Might have been genetic, but up until recently it was about a nine inch black plastic plate with indentations. Sera and sample were dropped, and the plate was rocked.
    Smooth is negative, agglutination is positive. Skill is only needed when the result is iffy.

    That is some old-school stuff, and it still works.
    Works for me. Works for Henry.
    I hope your daughter is OK.

  • Anonymous

    If I missed the point, it is that the system worked for you. And me.

    Somebody gave up your information to save the planet.

  • sarah

    Your comments kind of go all over the place. But at least one is irrelevant; City workers already have paid sick leave.

  • sarah

    How many of you who are concerned about small business owners have paid sick leave? That’s what I thought.

  • Anonymous

    Everyone here knows you care, and knows you don’t have a dog in this race.

    Maybe we old folks should step aside and holla from the sidelines.
    Or from the Sunny Jim site, or the Lake City home.

    That’s the thing about old folks…we feel.
    We may not have any influence at all, but we feel.

  • Mary

    The paid sick leave idea seems to be another great idea at the wrong time. People don’t give a crap about paid sick leave from jobs they don’t have! Can the city council and mayor work on getting some revenue in the door so we can stop the hemorahge of city services and jobs. A great man once said, “it’s the economy stupid”!

  • Blah blah

    There was no vaccination requirement when I earned my food workers or alcohol server permit in 2005. I doubt anything has changed.

  • Anonymous

    Andrew…
    And then Disqus goes all hourglass on me.

    This should be a requirement. So cheap now. Why not?

  • redherringplussome

    Most restaurants I know of do not allow workers to work sick. Restaurants owners take this very seriously as they care about their employees and their customers. Sick employees mean sick customers, mean people don’t return. And return business is everything. To deal with the pay, the workers trade shifts, that way they not only don’t have to work sick, but they end up working the same number of shifts, and get paid not only their hourly wage but also their tips.

    It is also already illegal to work sick in this state.

    Again, SF has had this law since 2007. If the law keeps people from working sick, then there would be a measurable effect. There isn’t one. Can you show different? On top of that almost 90% of workers in SF still report that they work when sick. The law isn’t working to helping to keep workers in the hospitality industry in SF from working sick, how will it help here?

    The proposal is nice in theory, but we can see in practice it doesn’t work. So instead of implementing yet another ordinance that won’t make a difference, let’s find something that does.

  • sarah

    Oh, but I do have a dog in this race, Barleywine. My daughter works in a cafeteria and she gets sick leave, thank god. So holla from the sidelines yourself.

    Again, how many of you get paid sick leave from your employers? Anyone who doesn’t and still doesn’t think people should have it? One way for people to keep the jobs they have is for them not to get so sick they end up unable to work at all. Forget norovirus; think of pneumonia.

  • Peter

    When Nick gets a thought, Seattle gets the flu. Stop thinking Nick, it is bad for us.

  • Anonymous

    I’m thinking Hemlock.

    For some reason my yard is busting out this year, daring me. Begging me.
    So Crates is calling. I’m not answering at this point, to those red stems.

  • Anonymous

    Show your sources please…thx.

  • Anonymous

    Your numbers are nice in theory, but let’s see some sources first in practice…thx.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not sure where I land on this issue (except to think it should really be a national policy), but the arguments against are terrible. Restaurants can’t afford it, but are doing it anyway, but by forcing their employees to take unpaid sick leave (yeah, because if anyone can afford it, it’s restaurant employees [/sarcasm]), and really they do this because of state law (uh huh), and we know this because of untrackable statistics (how do you know where you caught your cold?). I have no sympathy for the employers – especially restaurant employers – in this debate. Restaurant employees are probably the best candidates for paid sick leave, since they have the most impact on the public.

    The real fight the anti side can take is by saying it would push business out of Seattle. Which is why this would make a better state or federal law. But I don’t see this law happening soon at either the state or federal levels, so maybe we start in cities first and push it upward.

  • http://twitter.com/LuigiGiovanni Luigi Giovanni

    The resident restauranteur of the think tank hasn’t chimed in.

  • gohuskies

    I don’t think it will push food service business out of Seattle, at least. People live in Seattle and people want food available to buy nearby where they live. You couldn’t up and move all the restaurants across the lake to Bellevue like you could with a software company or whatever.

    I have little sympathy for the businesses in this case. Businesses nearly always claim that the new regulation proposed will be the death of their industry. Freiboth is right.

  • Monster

    intresting dont ya think, but i think we all know where he stands on it.

  • Peter

    Is it good for people to have sick leave available? Yes. Is the city wise enough to know exactly if and how it should be implimented in all situations? No. The city council is of a non profit mentality and has no place pretending to understand how a business should be run.

  • http://ocschwar.livejournal.com/ ocschwar

    It’s not only good for those people, it’s also good for those of us who won’t be catching the flu from them because they’re home.

  • http://twitter.com/michaelp_206 Michaelp

    I was at a great community meeting last night, and we were talking about parks and the budget and funding of parks and priorities, etc. etc.

    And I heard something that a liberal like me just melts over: tax us more to save these programs that we care about!

    These are the values of Seattleites. We are people that are willing to actually pay for the nice things we want, and for the values we hold close.

    Ensuring that someone can stay home because they are ill, or to care for a sick child, without losing pay (within reason) is wholly in line with those values. The workers are our neighbors, family and friends.

    If it means we have to pay a little more when we dine out to keep those protections in place, while also keeping the slim profit margins sustainable, then so be it. Should this be a national policy? Sure. So should taking care of the homeless, yet in Seattle, we are willing to do more than our fair share because it’s the right thing to do.

    While Wisconsin and other states move to make life worse for workers, I’m proud to live in a city that is moving on this idea, and that recently moved to protect workers paychecks.

  • Anonymous

    The city can certainly require a minimum number of paid sick days. We’re talking, what, 3 sick days? Describe a single situation where that would be too much.

    Seattle wouldn’t be telling companies how to run their businesses. I see making them provide at least 3 sick days just requiring them not to be, quite frankly, a**holes.

  • Peter

    How about: Gee, I shouldn’t have stayed out so late last night, I think I’ll call in sick and get paid anyway.

  • Peter

    The spreading of disease argument doesn’t hold up because people are, in most circumstances, very contagious well before they become clinical.

  • Peter

    As usual, the city of Seattle is intent on taking action to resolve a problem that has not been fully characterized. Make believe perception, compelling real action, equals unintended consequences. Just more of the Seattle merry of round of foolishness.

  • Larrythog

    Yes let’s do it and tie it to mandatory drug testing for all employed individuals with the city limits! Test positive your s.o.l. for benefits or social services…

  • charles

    Can someone explain what Anton means by “For every $1,000 increase in the cost of doing business, a restaurant needs an additional $20,000 in sales just to break even”?

  • Sistersuzey

    In San Francisco, Alameda and other areas where this was passed there are now many, many part time workers as apposed to what used to be full time.

  • Red

    Charles, what Anton means is that a typical restaurant has a 5% margin on sales. The other 95% of sales goes to pay expenses. So if the city mandates increased expenses then the restaurant will need to either raise prices or go out of business.

  • Ghotifamily

    Very Interesting take on all opinions here. I am a restaurant owner. My husband is a campus nurse at a private grade school. I also worked in the food service industry as an employee for 20 years prior. I understand both sides of the coin.
    Regarding Employees: My Husband educated me many years ago that his nursing instructors discussed issues of “self care deficite” by nursing students. If a person is not taking care of themselves they are more likley to get sick. For example. Eat healthy, practice proper sanitation methods, drink the proper amount of fluids, get enough sleep. It is well known that taking good care of your body keeps your immune system up which helps keep a person from getting sick so often. I practice this with my employees.

    It is also true that many employees are contageous 3 days prior to symptoms showing up.

    I will touch lightly on this topic: Employee honesty is a huge issue with me regarding paid sick leave.. Many folks have called in sick when they were hungover, or had a headache, or even fighting with their boyfriend with the excuse they were sick. Should restaurants require a doctors note to make sure their paid sick leave credible?

    Lastly I will give a little shout out to all the sick customers. Please stay home and not go out into public. Every day I see unsanitary practices by the general public. People coughing all over us and their table, picking their noses right in front uf us, sneazing direcly into their hands and then giving us the money and obviously not washing thier hands after using the bathroom. I feel everybody should be required to take a Health Card Class.
    Just because we are serving the public does not mean we are the only ones affecting public health.

    Also the 5% profit margin is true.

  • Wileytevalas

    I have worked in the food industry all my life.So many people myself included go to work sick because they can’t afford not to work.Your sickness always last longer,giving you a chance to infect more people.I would have to say the food industry is one of the worst in contaminating people with the common cold.

  • Nosickleave

    It is very easy to spend “other people’s money” when you decide that something makes sense for the public good – what happens if there are unintended consequences – for instance you put a company out of business because
    you require that they pay money they do not have. How many people might lose their jobs, and their healthcare because someone who does not own a business thinks it’s a great idea to “mandate” sick leave. What is next?
    Mandated healthcare? Mandated 401K? Mandated holiday pay?

  • Nosickleave

    It is very easy to spend “other people’s money” when you decide that something makes sense for the public good – what happens if there are unintended consequences – for instance you put a company out of business because
    you require that they pay money they do not have. How many people might lose their jobs, and their healthcare because someone who does not own a business thinks it’s a great idea to “mandate” sick leave. What is next?
    Mandated healthcare? Mandated 401K? Mandated holiday pay?

  • LDD

    Where do you get that information? Flu and colds are spread primarily by people coughing and sneezing – clinical symptions of colds and flu. Everything I have seen on contagion suggests people are most contagious when their symptoms are the worst.

  • Anonymous

    Just as easy as it is to deny other people basic life-affirming benefits, like paid sick leave? Who are you to choose whether or not they need paid time off? What about the consequences of people being unable to stay home to take care of their sick child?

    As a child care provider, I’ve seen parents bring in sick children because they have no alternatives. This was incredibly problematic during the Swine Flu epidemic, as schools were one of the biggest vectors of transmission.

  • Anonymous

    Just as easy as it is to deny other people basic life-affirming benefits, like paid sick leave? Who are you to choose whether or not they need paid time off? What about the consequences of people being unable to stay home to take care of their sick child?

    As a child care provider, I’ve seen parents bring in sick children because they have no alternatives. This was incredibly problematic during the Swine Flu epidemic, as schools were one of the biggest vectors of transmission.

  • Anonymous

    I’m with Licata. This legislation sounds like a slam dunk, and it’s the right thing to do.

  • Anonymous

    I’m with Licata. This legislation sounds like a slam dunk, and it’s the right thing to do.