Seattle’s paid sick and safe leave ordinance a win for workers and business

[eridani]

http://www.eoionline.org/blog/seattles-paid-sick-and-safe-leave-ordinance-a-win-for-workers-and-business/

Anyone who’s spent time in Seattle recently knows from the cranes punctuating the skyline, the new restaurants in every neighborhood, and the traffic jams that business here is booming.

Seattle’s paid sick and safe leave ordinance went into effect in September 2012, guaranteeing most people working in Seattle the right to earn paid leave. The initial evaluation report released by the City this week confirms that since the Paid Sick Days law was implemented, jobs and businesses have grown faster in Seattle than in surrounding cities.

Other big takeaways from the evaluation:

•The ordinance has succeeded in expanding access to paid sick leave, especially in restaurants where the percentage of companies providing it increased from 14% to 78%.
•More outreach needs to be done targeting both businesses and workers to assure everyone has access.
A number of small business owners supported Seattle’s paid sick leave ordinance from the beginning. In fact, several helped write the policy. But a vocal group of business lobbyists opposed passage and have grumbled since. Now we know that opponents are a small minority. According to the new study, 70% of Seattle business owners support the law.

[Wounded Bear]

1. More evil socialism...

and it works. Who knew?

[eridani]

2. Latest update from EOI

Employee Experience with Seattle Paid Sick and Safe Leave

http://www.eoionline.org/work-family/paid-sick-days/employee-experience-with-seattle-paid-sick-and-safe-leave/

In September 2012, Seattle became the third U.S. city to implement a paid sick leave ordinance. By early 2015, more than 20 cities and four states had paid sick leave laws on the books. Seattle’s law requires employers with more than four employees (full-time equivalents) to provide paid sick and safe leave for the health needs of workers and their family members, and to deal with the consequences of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

Initial evaluations of Seattle’s law and experiences in other localities suggest that many workers are likely to remain unaware of their rights to sick days. Lower wage workers are the least likely to be offered paid leave voluntarily by their employers, and with little bargaining power, are often unable to assert their legal rights even if aware of them.

To gain additional insight into the extent to which lower wage workers in Seattle are aware of the sick leave law and have access to paid sick leave, the Economic Opportunity Institute conducted a survey in partnership with the YWCA Seattle|King|Snohomish in the spring of 2015. Altogether, 83 people who had worked in Seattle during the preceding year participated. The responses to this survey provide insight into how widely Seattle’s sick leave law is being followed, but are not statistically valid for all Seattle workers.

In 2014, Seattle took the additional step of adopting its first citywide minimum wage ordinance. With multiple labor standards in effect, the City of Seattle is in the process of building a more robust enforcement capacity and undertaking renewed outreach to vulnerable workers in partnership with community organizations.

Key findings

The majority of respondents said their employer provided paid sick leave: 63% were aware that their employer provided paid sick leave, 20% said their employer did not provide paid sick leave, and others were unsure or did not respond to the question.
Half were aware of the Seattle law prior to taking the survey. Most reported learning about the law from either their employers or news media.
Half of all respondents reported taking sick leave in the previous year. 88% of leave takers used it for their own illness and 14% for a sick family member. Two women reported use for domestic violence.
Women respondents were more likely to use sick leave than men, both for themselves and family care. Whites were more likely than Black, Latino, and Asian respondents to use leave.
Among those who knew their employer provided paid sick leave, 75% had taken some in the previous year. 25% reported taking no paid sick days, and 17% reported taking 6 or more sick days.
Workers with higher incomes were far more likely to have access to and have used paid sick days, and much less likely to face retaliation, than the lowest income workers. Women were twice as likely as men to have been punished for calling in sick.