Ellington

Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata, accompanied by the Seattle Coalition for a Healthy Workforce and a host of local small-business owners, proposed an ordinance yesterday that would mandate paid sick leave for all employees within the city of Seattle.

The ordinance already has the support of Mayor Mike McGinn and multiple City Council members. Licata said he thinks the bill will come to a vote before the City Council in the month of August and expressed confidence that the ordinance will pass.

Licata, who has been a driving force behind the development of the ordinance, thinks the rationale behind it is fairly simple.

“I think that we need to recognize that we shouldn’t have sick people doing work, particularly where they are handling food or servicing other people,” he said.

Under the proposed ordinance, the amount of hours of paid leave accrued by workers depend on the size of the business. The employees of smaller businesses receive hours less often and can accumulate less, while the employees of larger businesses earn hours faster and can gain more. For an employer the size of the UW, the proposed legislation would mandate eight hours of paid leave for every six weeks worked, assuming the employee has a 40-hour work week.

ASUW Director of Government Relations Andrew Lewis hopes that the ordinance, if passed, will be beneficial to the UW student body.

“I would hope that the scope of the law would affect students on our campus; it would affect students who work for HFS [Housing & Food Services],” he said. “This is definitely something that we are monitoring, and we want to be part of the process as it develops. And we are definitely interested in the possibility of a city mandate that would give student employees access to paid sick days.”

The ordinance would have immediate consequences for students employed part-time, including those employed by HFS. Under current policy, these students receive no paid sick leave as less-than-half-time employees. In the event of sickness or injury, they are expected to find someone with which to exchange shifts.

If this ordinance is passed with a simple majority vote by the City Council and the approval of McGinn, even part-time student employees would be entitled to sick-day benefits, said Marilyn Watkins, policy director of the Economic Opportunity Institute and one of the main developers of the bill.

“They would also be eligible for benefits, [which] would accrue at the same rate,” Watkins said of part-time workers, such as those employed by HFS. “Somebody working half-time — they are only going to accrue about 20 hours in the course of the year.”

Workers would still have the option of exchanging shifts, but they wouldn’t be forced to do so, essentially providing HFS employees more options in the event of sickness.

The ordinance would also affect students working around the U-District. Charlie Wenger, a 2010 UW graduate who has worked at Shultzy’s Sausage for the past four years, expressed intrigue at the possible new law.

“I think it would be fairly beneficial if you earn it like that,” Wenger said. “I have worked in that system before, and it worked out pretty well. It is definitely nice to have paid sick leave on the back burner and not have to take a day off.”

Wenger’s co-worker, fellow 2010 UW graduate Bianca Liebhaber, said the law would be especially beneficial at Shultzy’s and other businesses in food service.

“I think it would kind of encourage people to not come in when they are sick if they have a couple sick days to kind of figure things out, [or] if they knew they were going to get paid that day,” Liebhaber said.

For UW faculty and staff, on the other hand, this ordinance is largely inconsequential. The university already gives full-time employees eight hours of paid leave for each month worked, which is similar to the policies of other major employers in the state. Both Boeing and Washington State University also have a base of eight hours per month of accrued leave.

Similar ordinances have already been passed into law in major metropolitan centers around the United States, including Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Milwaukee. In Philadelphia, such a bill was approved by the City Council on June 16 and awaits approval from the mayor.

These laws have largely been met with a positive reception. A recent study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in San Francisco found that two-thirds of employees within the city supported the changes the law had made. The San Francisco law, which has been in effect for four years, has also been effective, with only one in seven employers saying that the changes had negatively impacted the profitability of their businesses.

This has been one of the main arguments against the Seattle ordinance — that it would strangle the profits of businesses, particularly small businesses already operating on slim profit margins. Opponents of the bill also argue that it could lead to small businesses being forced to eliminate other benefits, such as health insurance or retirement.

Both Licata and Watkins, though, feel these fears are unfounded. Licata points to the success of the San Francisco law as proof that decreased profits would not inherently follow passage of this ordinance.

“There are always fears, but you have to base it on what actually happened,” he said. “There is no evidence that shows [decreased profits] are a problem.”

Even if it were to pass, however, the ordinance would not go into full-effect for at least 18 months. There would be a 12-month period between the ordinance’s passage and its implementation, followed by a six-month buffer period before employees could start using their sick days.

Reach reporter Kevin Dowd at news@dailyuw.com.