New York City Requires Paid Sick Leave

New York City has become the latest place to require employers to provide paid sick leave benefits for employees. New York City may not be the first place this has happened, but it is the most populous. New York City joins Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, and the state of Connecticut in requiring employers to provide paid time off for employee illness. The new law will go into effect in 2014 for employers with 20 or more workers and at a later date for smaller employers.

Those in favor of the new law cite studies that have shown companies that provide paid sick days to employees tend to have lower turnover, lower costs of hiring new employees, fewer employee absences, and better productivity. They argue that when workers don’t take time off when starting to get ill, they often end up taking longer absences as their condition worsens. Also, when employees come to work with contagious illnesses, they spread them to co-workers, increasing absences and lowering the productivity of other workers.

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