Changes to the relationship between workers and their bosses are City Council discussion in the coming months.
First in the city council line-up will likely be a paid sick leave proposal that could come by the end of the year.
“We will come up with a draft proposal somewhere in the middle,” Mayor Marilyn Strickland said, noting that employee groups want broad sick leave policies, while many businesses fear workers would abuse such policies and require payroll managers to monitor yet another employee benefit. “My proposal is to have it as streamlined as possible.”
One option is to simply have businesses state that they have a paid sick leave policy for their workers when their licenses are annually renewed, for example, and have the city's mandated policy enforced through a complaint system rather than a compliance system.
The call for a paid sick leave policy for businesses operating within Tacoma comes as several cities around the country have enacted their own policies. A group of labor and worker groups, under the banner of Health Tacoma, have rallied support to petition the City Council for a formal policy in Tacoma.
A proposal being floated would require employers to offer at least three days of paid sick leave per year that would be earned at a rate of the hour per 40 hours worked. Proof of the policy would have to be provided when a business renews its annual license. Operations that already provide “shift” swapping would also receive special consideration, although the ordinance would apply to all businesses and non-profits, regardless of size, according to the Washington Retail Association, which is in talks with Strickland about the issue.
City Councilmember Ryan Mello has given his support to a city-mandated paid sick leave ordinance but says the mayor’s working proposal doesn’t go far enough. He wants a proposal that calls for at least a week of paid sick leave since that is the length of time people with the flu are contagious.
The Healthy Tacoma proposal, for example, would have workers at workplaces of fewer than 10 people accruing an hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to 40 hours in a year; while worker in medium-sized workplaces could earn up to 72 hours. Large workplaces of more than 250 employees would have to offer up to provide sick leave as part of a flexible leave pool system that also includes vacation time as long as the combined paid time off is at least 13 days in a year.
Workers would be able to use their sick leave for their own illnesses or treatments as well as for the care of a sick family member and for medical attention, counseling or other services in connection with domestic violence or for public health emergency closures of schools or daycares.
Healthy Tacoma champions the cause with statistics that some 40,000 workers in the city have no paid sick leave. That fact causes financial strains for the nearly three-fourths of school-age children in Pierce County who have two working parents since parents without sick leave are less able to stay home with an ill child, sometimes being forced to send the child to daycare or school, or keep an older child out of school to care for siblings.
The issue is slated for council discussion after the current budget talks end in December. Then comes the issue of raising the minimum wage for workplaces within the city. A group of workers, known as 15 Now, wants the city to mandate a minimum wage of $15 an hour for all workplacing with ties to Tacoma. The group has presented 1,300 signatures to the city council supporting the idea.
“That is something I would prefer happen on the state or federal level,” Strickland said, noting that Seattle and SeaTac have passed $15 an hour minimums but have set a deadline to meet that goal out to 2021 for small businesses and 2017 for larger workplaces.
Washington state’s $9.32 an hour wage is already the highest minimum wage in the nation, so Seattle’s higher wage than the state minimum tops that and has already been challenged in federal court.
Making the economic case that Tacoma has the highest cost of living in the nation, therefore demanding the highest minimum wage would be tough since the cost of living and job base in Tacoma is much different than what is found in Seattle and SeaTac.
“We have a much different situation here,” Strickland said.
The root of the paid sick leave movement and the call for the highest minimum wage in the nation is rooted in a fundamental flaw and the same anti-corporation uprise that caused the “Occupy” movement three years ago.
“It’s the economic illiteracy we have in this nation,” he said. “There are some people who just don’t understand how the economics of how this system works. If you have never woken up in the middle of the night worrying about payroll, you have never owned a business.” Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber CEO Tom Pierson said.
Businesses face higher health care costs and more strict regulations that cause profit margins to shrink. Adding a dramatic boost in the minimum wage would force many businesses to either close outright or cut workers’ hours. Neither option would actually add money to wallets.
“Many of the businesses I have talked to are on very, very thin margins,” he said. “Today’s council understands that.”