You Should Totally Be Getting Paid Sick Leave, City Task Force Says

By Austin Brown in News on Apr 4, 2016 8:47PM

A report from the City of Chicago's Working Families Task Force has come out recommending that employers in Chicago offer all of their workers five days of sick leave a year. The recommendation taps into a long-running debate about the effectiveness of paid leave in Chicago and around the United States.

"It is unacceptable that more than 200,000 workers in Chicago cannot take a sick day without worrying about losing their job or being unable to pay their bills," Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Tribune in a statement. "This task force report provides the city with a road map for ensuring that our working families receive this important protection."

The task force began last June after a referendum in February 2015 showed more than 80 percent of voters were interested in adopting paid sick leave policies. Created in the model of Emanuel's Minimum Wage Working Group, the task force sought to find common ground on various issues of leave and work protection, including sick leave, for working-class families. It was made up of an assortment of Chicago business owners, City Council members, and employee advocates, who met with academics, focus groups and policymakers before releasing this first report.

The report proposes an hour of sick leave for every forty hours worked, with a maximum of five eight-hour days of sick leave a year. The number represents somewhat of a compromise for employee advocates—an earlier proposal to mandate sick leave offered an hour for every thirty worked, with a maximum of nine days for larger companies. But those invested in the decision still expressed hope that the recommendation could alleviate much of the difficulty of dealing with sickness in the workplace, for employees and employers alike.

Not all members of the task force were supportive of the recommendation—some, including the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, felt that the 0.7 percent to 1.5 percent increase in labor costs would exacerbate wage problems in the city and discourage employers from investing in their employees. However, Anne Ladky, the co-chair of the task force and executive director for nonprofit organization Women Employed, told the Tribune the recommendation represented a "significant majority" of the members.

While a powerful step forward, The Working Families Task Force admits that its recommendations are far from an endpoint—other areas for future research include the complications that might arise from using sick leave interchangeably with family leave, the potential of discounting office supplies and the possibility of leveraging the resources of the city itself.

"While not necessarily within the scope of the Task Force," the report says, "[these options] provide avenues the City should separately pursue as part of its ongoing work to support businesses."