Debate surrounding the sick- leave proposal initiated by the grassroots Healthy Families, Healthy City Campaign and Ald. Austin King, District 8, last September is growing as the proposal makes its way to the Common Council.
The proposal would provide full-time employees with an hour of sick pay for every 30 hours worked, which is approximately nine days annually, and would cover employees who work a minimum of 12 hours per week.
King said paid sick leave would protect Madison workers.
'It's the ability to have the right to stay at home and not be fired,' King said.
'About 39,000 workers in Madison don't have paid sick leave, and the vast majority of them are low income,' King said.
'So what happens if you are low income and you miss two days of work at the end of the month? Well those two days of work might have been rent money, grocery money, or money to pay the heating bill.'
King said he has received support for the proposal from religious and labor groups. But Ald. Paul Van Rooy, District. 18, said he has received many e-mails and letters from small businesses expressing their opposition to the bill and only a few from people voicing support.
'Where someone in the city of Madison has to pay sick leave but someone right outside the city would not have to, creates an unfair competitive position,' Van Rooy said.
Debate over the proposal has heated up in recent days in the wake of a critical report released by the Chamber of Commerce last week. That report, provided by Madison-based Northstar Economics, contained several factual errors that exaggerated the negative effects of paid sick leave.
The study's main claim was that the sick leave proposal would result in a loss of approximately $21 million in city property tax revenue as businesses leave the city.
But, the chamber has acknowledged errors in the study, one of them being the exaggeration of the projected loss by a factor of 10.
King called the study 'a hyperbolic mendacious study' while Van Rooy deemed it 'a not very correct report with inappropriate data.' Dennis Winters, Director of Research for Northstar, said only that Northstar had done what was asked of it in preparing the study.
Nonetheless, Van Rooy said the proposal is not likely to become law.
'I don't think there is support on the council right now to pass it,' Van Rooy said.
