June 22-28, 2012
Countdown
Many firms not prepared for Seattle’s new sick leave law
By AISLYN GREENE
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Makini Howell has four restaurants — soon
to be five — with 30 employees, and an upbeat
attitude toward what Seattle employers will face
in about two months when the city’s paid sick
leave law kicks in.
The chef and co-owner of Plum Bistro already
has created a system to track workers’ accrued
hours and added a blurb in her employee manual
about the new law.
And while Howell has heard warnings from
the state restaurant association about the new
law being an expensive burden, she said San
Francisco has done just fine since enacting a
similar sick leave law five years ago.
“The sky did not fall,” she said, “businesses
did not move out of the city, and people did not
take too much time off.”
Not everyone shares Howell’s sunny perspective about the new law, officially called the Paid
Sick/Safe Time Ordinance, which the Seattle
City Council passed last September.
Bob LeCoque, chief operating officer of boat
winch maker Markey Machinery, said the law’s
provisions are “exasperating enough” to make
him think — at least in passing — about moving the 105-year-old company from Seattle. His
company already offers sick leave to its 40-plus
salaried and union employees, and it doesn’t
need the extra record-keeping hassles.
“The whole crux of this ordinance,” he said,
“is it’s being rammed down everybody’s throat,
whether that particular business has a need for
it or not.”
In between the polar opposite views held by
the owners of Plum Bistro and Markey Machinery can be found possibly the majority of Seattle
business owners — especially smaller proprietors — who haven’t reckoned at all with what’s
coming Sept. 1.
Katheryn Bradley, an attorney with Lane
Powell, said she sees “a lot of blank looks”
at the seminars the Seattle law firm is hosting
to help employers navigate the law before the
deadline.
“It’s the (small) businesses that have never
been regulated on the subject of paid time off that
are going to face huge challenges,” she said.
Ready or not, businesses with at least five
full-time-equivalent employees must comply
with the ordinance that the City Council passed
by an 8-1 vote, propelled in part by concerns
that restaurant servers were showing up sick and
spreading disease. The law requires companies
to provide not only paid sick leave but “safe
time” off to deal with domestic violence.
Even businesses not based in Seattle must
conform if they have employees who perform
at least 240 hours of work in Seattle within a
calendar year, which puts the new law on the
radar of companies outside the city limits (see
page 19).
Beyond that, the decisions facing employers
are numerous, Bradley said. For instance, businesses must decide whether to adopt separate
sick and vacation policies, or use a combined
paid-time off plan.
Startups less than two years old are exempt
from the ordinance. So are work-study students
and independent contractors. Rules released in
May — though they’re likely to be revised again
— allow businesses to cash out accrued sick
leave at the time of termination, because many
employers view the cash-out as an incentive to
keep employees from abusing leave.
The city already faces challenges to the law.
In May, BNSF and Union Pacific railroads filed
suit in U.S. District Court for Western Washington, claiming the ordinance is invalid because
railroads are covered by federal laws governing
employment rights, benefits and labor relations,
which trump local law. No word on when that
will be resolved.
So what are business owners to do?
For starters, Bradley said, they should work up
a detailed written policy, determine how they’ll
track accrued, used and rolled-over hours, and
train managers and supervisors about the reasons employees are permitted to take time off,
so companies don’t end up with a charge filed
against them.
The law will be monitored through a complaint-based system with the Seattle Office
of Civil Rights. If wrongdoing is found, the
city will try to mediate without penalty to the
employer, though it has the authority to require
a business to pay up to two years’ worth of back
pay and damages up to $10,000.
The “safe” component of the law allows
employees to use accrued sick leave to cope
with the effects of domestic abuse, sexual
assault or stalking, involving themselves or a
family member. The law provides a very broad
definition of family or household members —
for example, an employee could take time off
if her roommate was the victim of domestic
violence.
Bradley stresses the importance of training.
“You could see how a front-line supervisor
might not be all that familiar with all of the reasons that might be permissible for taking leave,”
she said. “If you get a request from an employee
saying, ‘I need time off because my roommate
needs x, y, and z because they were a victim,’
you could see somebody saying, ‘Well, no you
can’t take that time off, we’re really busy.’ And
that could potentially lead to a charge, and penalties and damages.”
In predicting the impact of requiring sick
leave on the local economy, the city turned to
similar legislation in San Francisco, which
was implemented in 2007 and used as an initial model for the Seattle law. A recent study by
Institute for Women’s Policy Research found
that two-thirds of San Francisco employers saw
no decline in profits after the law passed.
Howell, the restaurateur, said workers at all
four of her locations have been accruing sick
leave since September, but she said she has paid
out only three days’ worth.
“I think it’s like any relationship – if you
don’t try to game your friends or your family, they don’t usually try to do it to you,” she
said. “There’s a rotten tomato in every box, but
I don’t think people set out to take advantage
of you – and if they do, I think you have bigger
problems than paid sick leave.”
Others, like LeCoque of Markey Machinery,
have a more skeptical attitude. “A lot of people,
I think, are going wait and see if this is reality,”
he said, “or just a bad dream we’ll wake up from
someday.”
Reprinted for web use with permission from the Puget Sound Business Journal. ©2012, all rights reserved. Reprinted by Scoop ReprintSource 1-800-767-3263.