On the heels of New York City raising the minimum wage to $15, businesses are bracing for yet another proposal that would only exacerbate the policy pressures bearing down on restaurants.
In May, the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, a longtime proponent of mandatory paid time off, unveiled a new version of his proposal from his days as a City Council member — Intro 800A — that poses an immediate danger to the Big Apple’s service industries.
This law would require all businesses with five or more employees to provide two weeks of paid time off to all of their employees. This vacation-time mandate — the first in the nation — comes on top of paid sick and safe leave, already mandated by law.
If enacted, the bill would inflict severe financial harm on small businesses, and many restaurants and service-industry businesses will find it impossible to shoulder the new scheduling burdens.
Intro 800A presents yet another mandated compensation increase, forcing employers to make difficult decisions about employee hours, and pay, while creating extreme scheduling uncertainty.
Supporters of the proposed PTO mandate claim that it provides increased flexibility for employees to take time off for personal needs. Yet this assumption doesn’t reflect how affected industries actually operate. Under Williams’ proposal, every time an employee decides to take a day off, the employer needs to bring in somebody else to do that job, essentially paying two people to perform a single job responsibility.
This is a bad solution in search of a problem. As it is, restaurant employees can trade shifts to accommodate their schedules and personal needs. This model works.
Intro 800A would entitle workers up to two additional weeks of PTO without providing for appropriate scheduling limitations or blackout periods in employer policy.
New York’s vibrant restaurant scene would grind to a halt.
Williams’ law also increases the pool of days during which employees can call in last-minute and still get paid to 15 days, with 10 of those days usable for any reason at all. It also stipulates that if the employee’s reason for using the day is “unforeseeable,” he can contact the employer “as soon as practicable.” The legislation also provides that for “foreseeable” reasons, an employer can request up to two weeks’ notice, but it offers no concrete definition of what counts as foreseeable.
Therefore, an employee could use PTO for any reason and call in on the day of, as long as the reason was “unforeseeable.” Furthermore, this proposal mandates that all employers provide their employees with the ability to call in for a total of three weeks per year — and still get paid. The costs of these government-mandated added wages will be enormous.
see also
What AOC doesn’t get about wages and human worth
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is again trying to teach deep moral…
Click Here: cheap kanken backpack
Williams’ law would require employers to pay each full-time, hourly-wage employee at least another $1,200 on top of the pay for all the shifts they actually did work by the end of the year.
For perspective, let’s say you run a small, full-service restaurant with 20 employees. This PTO mandate would require you to pay employees at least an added $24,000 every year (based on the minimum wage), with absolutely nothing in return.
Our industry is known for its flexibility, but if the city’s mandate makes this business model impossible, the very people who have sought its benefits will be out of a job and have fewer options that make the industry’s work-life balance possible.
“One size fits all” is almost never the correct way to write policy. If the City Council is determined to go ahead with this mandate, then it should at least offer a hardship waiver to qualifying restaurants, provide subsidies to cover the added cost to employers or align this new mandate with the already existing “fair work week” legislation that requires two weeks’ advance scheduling for fast food restaurants.
Finally, we urge the City Council to change the “unforeseeable” loophole and require the 10 new gift days be strictly reserved for planned usage so employers can schedule employees in response to real-world needs. Because breaking the backs of the small businesses that make New York’s restaurant scene possible, and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs, is in no one’s interest.
Melissa Autilio Fleischut is the president and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association.
0 thoughts on “This ‘paid leave’ bill is a real restaurant-killer”