April 19--Los Angeles workers would be able to earn at least six paid sick days annually -- twice the state minimum -- under a proposed law that the City Council backed Tuesday.
California now requires employers to provide at least three days of paid sick leave annually. Labor and community activists had pushed for L.A. to increase the mandated amount of time off for local workers who fall ill or need to take care of a loved one, arguing that employees too often are forced to decide between their health and their jobs.
Under the new law, "no longer will workers have to make a choice between putting food on the table and getting well," Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said at a news conference Tuesday outside City Hall.
Some business groups argued that the new requirements would place another hard burden on employers who already are facing other costly new mandates -- including a string of increases to the L.A. minimum wage that eventually will require businesses to pay at least $15 hourly.
The California Restaurant Assn. warned that the sick-leave requirement could jeopardize small restaurants.
"This will have a big impact and a big burden on our local businesses," Central City Assn. government relations director John Howland told city lawmakers Tuesday, urging them to track its effects.
The proposed law would not, however, go as far as rules already imposed on L.A.'s big hotels and city contractors, which must provide a dozen paid days off for sickness and other needs. Business groups feared the city would expand those requirements last year, when City Councilman Curren Price said citywide rules should be "consistent" with earlier L.A. laws.
Price told reporters Tuesday that city lawmakers had made "an effort to compromise in a reasonable way" before deciding on six days. Other California cities, including San Francisco and Santa Monica, have required big employers to allow workers to earn at least nine paid sick days annually.
The rules would go into effect for bigger businesses in July. Small businesses -- those with 25 employees or fewer -- would have an additional year before they would have to comply.
City lawmakers voted 8-6 against a proposal, introduced by Councilman David Ryu, to completely exempt small businesses from having to meet the higher Los Angeles requirements.
Backers of the new law estimate more than 650,000 L.A. workers could be affected by the city requirements, based on an earlier analysis by the nonprofit Institute for Women's Policy Research. That report found that nearly half of private sector workers across Los Angeles had no access to paid sick leave at all before the California state law was passed.
Price and other lawmakers originally had planned to include required sick days in the minimum-wage law that was passed last year, but they postponed the plan after Mayor Eric Garcetti and business groups raised concerns that the idea hadn't been thoroughly studied.
Under the proposed law, Los Angeles workers would be able to accrue an hour of sick leave for every 30 hours they work, the same rate as under California state rules. However, Los Angeles workers would be able to use more time than under state law, which allows employers to limit the paid sick leave that workers take annually to three days.
Los Angeles employers also could offer the required sick days upfront, instead of having employees accrue them over time.
Workers in L.A. would not be paid for unused sick days, but accrued time could be carried over to the next year. Businesses could cap that accrued time at 72 hours, or set a higher cap or none at all. Employers would be barred from retaliating against workers who requested or used their sick days, according to the proposal.
Local lawmakers stressed that the rules also would allow workers to use sick days to take care of "any individual related by blood or affinity" -- wording they said would help include and protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Angelenos and non-traditional families.
The City Council voted 13-1 to start drafting the new law, with Councilman Mitch Englander opposing it and Councilwoman Nury Martinez absent.
City lawyers will draft the proposed law, which then will return to the City Council for final approval. If the law wins final approval, Los Angeles will join more than two dozen other cities and counties nationwide that have mandated that employers provide a minimum amount of paid sick days, according to the National Partnership for Women Families.
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