Each employer should be able to determine its own sick-leave policy as part of its overall benefits package, rather than have that policy dictated by city government. The Spokane City Council should take off the table its proposal to mandate sick leave to all employers. 

That said, the council is assembling a work group to study how precisely a citywide sick-leave policy would be crafted. The approach suggests that the Council isn’t looking at whether to mandate a sick-leave benefit, but how exactly it’s going to go about it. With the tone that’s been set, a hard stand against the measure is likely futile. 

With that in mind, we hope the working group at least considers in its deliberations the effects the policy stands to have on small businesses and look for ways to ease those burdens. 

The Spokane Alliance, a group that describes itself as being made up of “30 faith-based, union, and community organizations,” provided the wording for an ordinance that Councilman Jon Snyder has brought forward and is serving as a starting point for discussions. 

In that ordinance, employers with fewer than 49 full-time equivalent workers would be required to pay each worker up to 40 hours in sick leave a year. As proposed, sick leave would accrue at one hour of earned leave for every 30 hours worked, after the first 90 days of employment. For employers that have more than 49 employees, sick leave would accrue at a faster pace. 

As written, the policy would apply to a small retail shop with one employee the same as it would to a manufacturer with 48 workers, despite profound differences in how microbusinesses and their larger counterparts operate.

In the first quarter of 2014, the most recent period for which data were available, about 11,380 companies in Spokane County employed four or fewer people, making up just over two-thirds of all companies in the county. Another 2,080 companies had between five and nine employees, representing 12 percent of all concerns. 

Those small businesses play an important role in the Spokane economy and are more sensitive to changes in business climate, including increased regulation and imposed benefits. They should be exempt from the rules that apply to larger employers, or at a minimum, leave should accrue more slowly. The federal Affordable Care Act treats employers with 25 or fewer workers differently, and in similar fashion, the city should consider viewing its small businesses through a different lens when considering sick leave.

The Council’s motive is understandable. Ideally, all employers would take care of their employees when they are sick or have to care for family members who are ill. Companies should put their employees in a secure position where they don’t have to choose between their income and their health—or the health of a family member.

But it should be incumbent upon the employer to provide that benefit. And the free market shouldn’t be required to provide that benefit because of government mandate. It’s not how a free market should function.