Taxes in different states are interesting. Businesses will always set up shop in states that have lower or no taxes, which is why you see many companies moving from California (among the highest state taxes in the country) to Texas (among the lowest state taxes in the country). It makes sense to do business in a place where you can pass along goods to the consumer for the cheapest possible.
In Florida, a recent interest-group-sponsored measure pushed for mandatory paid sick leave in Orange County (Florida, not California).
Organize Now had led the coalition of groups that backed the 2012 ballot referendum in Orange County. They teamed with Democrats, Hispanics and others to collect more than 50,000 petition signatures from voters to get it on the local ballot.
This wasn’t a grassroots effort, it was a petition sponsored by Organize Now, an Orlando-based interest group that specializes in progressive causes, and by Moveon.org, a national interest group that funds millions into local causes where opposition can’t raise nearly as many funds.
But according to Bryce Covert of ThinkProgress, it’s the nefarious big business interests we should be worried about:
Scott sided with big business interests including Disney World, Darden Restaurants (owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster), and the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
Obviously the Darden Group offers good benefits, or people wouldn’t work there. They also employs thousands of Floridians. If they were forced to pay for paid sick leave by the county government, they would either move to a different county (unemploying hundreds) or out of Florida (unemploying thousands and damaging the Florida economy). Orange County also includes Disneyworld in Florida, one of the state’s largest employers, who would be damaged by a bill essentially requiring them pay employees to not work.
Covert continues:
[Gov. Scott] made his decision quickly, only taking four of the 15 days he legally had to review the bill before he signed it.
He “only” took four days. Only in government is taking 4/15 days to get something done considered “quick”.
As far as this ballot measure being a grassroots effort, Covert gets too cute by half and reveals that it actually wasn’t:
More than 50,000 voters had tried to get the measure on the November 6 ballot but the County Commission voted it off. It made it on the ballot in 2014 thanks to a three-judge panel.
Covert neglects to mention that the signatures were because of Organize Now and national interest group Moveon.org who scared people into signing it, saying that employers would never pay for sick leave if this bill didn’t pass. That’s not from me, that’s from the Organize Now website.
Also, a decision of a three-judge panel is not the same as the “will of 50,000 voters” or any kind of grassroots effort.
So to recap: the paid-sick-leave-measure would have driven Orange County FL’s two largest employers out of the county, which causes large unemployment, or to drastically cut their workforce, which causes large unemployment, or to hike up their costs, which causes people to not buy their product and then layoffs to cut costs, which causes large unemployment.
The measure requires paid sick leave, despite the fact these employers already offer unpaid sick leave. If you get sick—you don’t lose your job. So essentially, employers would be forced to pay people to not work. Any doctor’s note for you or a family member could get an employer to pay you for not showing up. Here are the numbers:
Both full- and part-time employees would earn one hour of sick time for every 37 hours they work, to a maximum of 56 hours annually. Employers with fewer than 15 workers would not have to provide sick pay but could not penalize workers who took unpaid time off for being sick.
That’s one hour of sick leave per week for a full-time worker, earning you one week off per year of paid sick leave. And worse, if you employ just 15 people (like many small businesses), you’d be forced to pay for a week of sick leave for an employee.
So multiply one week off by every worker, and by a few hundred for businesses like Red Lobster which employ hundreds in the county, and you’ll see thousands of hours of wages that the company loses, which it must recoup by 1) cutting wages 2) cutting employees or 3) raising prices.
Covert sees this Economic 101 logic and responds by saying that paid sick leave is actually…good for business:
Big business stood in opposition to the Orange County effort on paid sick leave because it claimed such a bill would drive up costs. Yet a study of San Francisco, which enacted a paid sick leave policy in 2007, showed that a majority of businesses saw either no impact or a positive one on profitability. Other research has shown such policies to be good for business and job growth.
Here’s the big San Francisco study Covert cites:
But after implementation of the paid sick-leave law, San Francisco experienced an increase in employment. A study by the Drum Major Institute found that employment in San Francisco increased 3.5 percent between the start of 2006 and the start of 2010.
First things first, the law took effect early 2007, so 2006 is irrelevant. Second of all, it’s curious that the study ended early 2010, because:
Employment growth in Northern California was negative in 2010. Employment in the greater Bay Area declined by 1.4 percent last year. Employment fell by 4,500 total jobs in San Francisco County, a decline of 0.9 percent. The unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent in 2010.
So no, there’s no support that paid sick leave helps business, and only evidence that it hurts business.
Instead of having a patchwork of laws for different counties within a state when it comes to basic regulations such as employment, Gov. Scott signed a bill to ensure that regulations remain uniform, encouraging economic growth in Florida. That’s not good for big business or small business or some other bogeyman—it’s good for a state and its workers.
