Supporters and opponents of the controversial paid sick leave legislation continue to make their final pleas to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who will ultimately determine the fate of the proposed legislation.
Quinn has not taken a position on the bill, which was introduced in March of this year and currently mandates that employers provide five days of sick time at firms with fewer than 20 employees, and nine days at firms with 20 or more employees.
Supporters of the bill organized a rally on Wednesday, October 13 in Jackson Heights to keep the pressure on Quinn to support the legislation, which already has at least 35 members in favor of it, supporters say.
“This is extremely important to the immigrant community, and that’s the heart of the immigrant community in Jackson Heights,” said City Councilmember Danny Dromm, who is one of the bill’s supporters.
During the end of last week, Quinn’s legal staff met with the heads of the city’s five Chambers of Commerce, to discuss the concerns that the business community and the Chambers have expressed about the bill.
“We are going to continue to fight to kill this bill,” said Jack Friedman, Executive Vice President of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. “We would much rather put our efforts into a worker protection bill that we could all support that penalized those employers who mistreat workers by threatening their jobs or their livelihoods illegally.”
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also spoken out against the bill saying it would cripple small businesses.
A study conducted by the Partnership for New York City with data analysis and interpretation by Ernst & Young showed that the proposed bill would result in an overall increase of 0.3 percent in citywide private payroll costs, which amounts to $789 million a year.
“I think it’s a bad idea from the get-go in an economic climate where we are driving businesses out of the city,” said City Councilmember Dan Halloran, who still has many questions about the bill’s legality and enforcement. Halloran said this bill coupled with a living wage bill on the horizon would “devastate the small and mid-sized businesses in the city.”
However, supporters like Dromm say that an employer’s objective should be to treat their employees well, and five days of paid leave to tend to their own health or their families’ health is a no-brainer.
“It’s only human to do that,” Dromm said. “How could people argue against this? I don’t get it at all.”
