As of September 1, 2012, Seattle’s (WA) businesses within its city limits having five or more employees must provide paid sick leave or face legal consequences. This follows the trailblazing actions of the 2007 voter-approved mandatory sick leave law in San Francisco (CA) and the city council-approved Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act (2008) in Washington, DC.  According to the Seattle Times article, the new law requirements are: 1) paid sick leave coverage for all businesses with five or more employees; 2) employees must work at least 240 hours within the city even if the employer is located outside of Seattle; 3)sets minimum requirements for accrual, use, and carry-over of sick leave; 4) offers job protection from retaliation for employees who use their sick leave; 5) creates a mechanism for monitoring and enforcement of the new law. "By the first of October, many employees will have accumulated a half-day of sick leave. When those employees get a call from school that their child has a fever of 103, they can go pick up that child and still get paid," said Marilyn Watkins, policy director of the Economic Opportunity Institute.  Although for most businesses in Washington State who have established sick leave policies in place, the new Seattle law presents new challenges and criticism. “There is a huge amount of compliance required of companies that already have robust sick-leave policies,” said Sean Corry, president of Sprague, Israel, and Giles, an insurance brokerage firm for non-profits. As Seattle area businesses adopt the new sick leave requirements, they find it a struggle, especially when tracking the hours of employees who just spend part of their work time in the city limits since many have multiple offices in the area. While in other parts of the country with similar paid sick leave laws such as, Connecticut’s new 2012 law that has required businesses with more than 50 employees to have paid sick leave, and smaller businesses with under 50 employees are exempt according to The Wall Street Journal article, Sick-time Rules Re-Emerge. “Small employers that don’t provide paid sick leave in most cases have made that choice because they can’t afford it. It isn’t that they’re being mean-spirited,” said Helen Darling of the National Business on Health. Nevertheless, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research has found more than forty percent of private sector workers in United States have no access to paid sick days. In their study on San Francisco’s Paid Sick Leave Ordinance (2011), the Institute found that two-thirds of the employers supports the law while 1 in 7 voicing complaints about effects on their profitability. The study found that a typical worker used only three days per year to stay home sick or care for children or relatives; and twenty-five percent of the employees took no time off for personal illness.

In New York City, the city council has proposed a law that would require employers to give staff at least five days of paid sick leave each year. Even with a veto-proof majority on the council, the presiding leader of the group to call for votes because the probability of economic strains for small business in a bad economy as noted in the article, On Paid Sick Leave, NYC Tries to Join the Rest of the World. New York City has over one million workers who do not receive paid sick leave. Out of 196 countries in the world, 160 provide paid sick leave, leaving the United States of the 36 that do not have paid sick leave for workers. In addition, when examining the top 15 wealthiest and productive countries, one finds that the United States is the singular exception to national sick leave with pay for its workers as found in the 2009 international study by the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy.

Susanne L Woodford, Freelance Writer