New Connecticut Law Requires Paid Sick Leave. Will the Trend Spread?

By Rieva Lesonsky

Do you have service employees, such as waiters, food service workers or hairdressers, who come in contact with the public? Then you need to know about a major change that will affect you (if you’re in Connecticut) and may affect you in the future if your state follows suit.

After passionate debate, Connecticut is becoming the first state in the nation to require businesses to provide paid sick leave to workers, reports The Wall Street Journal. Legislators debated for 11 hours before passing the bill, which will take effect at the beginning of 2012 after being signed into law.

The bill does not affect all small businesses—only those in the service sector and with more than 50 employees. Only hourly workers are covered, and they only receive one hour of paid sick leave for each 40 hours worked, with a maximum of 5 days per year. Employees are also required to have worked at least 10 hours per week during the previous quarter in order to receive the paid sick leave. In addition, manufacturers, nonprofit organizations are exempt, along with salaried employees, independent contractors, temporary employees and day laborers. Nonetheless, estimates are that some 200,000 to 400,000 workers in the state will be affected by the legislation.

Although Connecticut is the first state to pass such a law, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Milwaukee have passed mandatory paid sick-leave legislation in the past few years, and similar legislation is pending in California, Massachusetts, Philadelphia and Denver. Will the concept of paid sick leave spread beyond these cities and states?

According to statistics cited by the National Partnership for Women and Families, a backer of the new law, approximately 40 million U.S. workers have no paid sick leave. Among low-wage workers, more than 80 percent do not have paid sick leave.

Many business organizations opposed the legislation, saying it would place an unfair burden on employers. But consider what happens when sick employees are forced to come to work or lose pay. (In some cases, they may even fear losing their jobs). First, it goes without saying they’re likely to infect co-workers (and you), hurting productivity overall.

More importantly, workers who come in contact with customers (as these service workers do) could spread infection, leading to bad publicity for your business. In the worst-case scenario, they could even lead to a lawsuit. For many businesses, protecting yourself against that possibility would be worth the cost of paid sick leave.

Image by Flickr user Jade Jackson (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2011 at 6:00 am and is filed under Business Law, Compliance, Small Business, small business, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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