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From NYT:
The law went into effect on April 1. And despite the naysayers and the critics, the skies didn’t fall. Instead, without hoopla or hullabaloo, the city quietly became the largest in the nation to ensure that the vast majority of workers wouldn’t lose their jobs or a portion of their paychecks if they or their close relatives got sick.
For Mayor Bill de Blasio, who significantly expanded the law’s reach when he took office in January, it is a notable and welcome victory. He has been battered and bruised as his efforts to raise the city’s minimum wage and to tax the wealthy to pay for universal prekindergarten foundered in Albany.
But with the paid sick leave law, the mayor has clearly succeeded in making good on his promise “to lift up working families and raise the wage and benefit floor for all New Yorkers.”
As a result of the new law, about 1.2 million workers will have paid sick leave for the first time, according to Nancy Rankin, vice president for policy research at the Community Service Society of New York, a group that works on behalf of low-income New Yorkers. That’s about 240,000 more people than would have received the benefit if the mayor hadn’t expanded the scope of the policy.
Under the new law, companies with five or more employees will have to provide up to five paid days off to workers if they, or their close relatives, fall ill. (Employees accrue leave based on their hours worked.) A weaker version of the law, which passed last year, would have affected businesses with 15 or more workers and did not include the manufacturing sector.
In corporate conference rooms, such changes might be greeted with a yawn. After all, we professionals typically take paid sick leave for granted. But in today’s economy, where the fastest growing sectors are creating low-wage jobs, this change could not be more critical.
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