Sick leave mandate would be bad for business

Flawed policy leads to higher costs for businesses, fewer jobs

Last October, Albuquerque voters spoke. They voted down a sick leave law that would have created a mandate that employers must offer sick leave to employees. The reason they voted down this mandate is because on the surface, it appeared well-intentioned.

However, the law contained other measures, such as establishing comprehensive new record-keeping requirements for employers, preventing employers from using a PTO (paid time off system), granting enforcement and investigative authority to a public agency, taking away an employer’s ability to set schedules and increasing employers’ legal liability. This was all hidden in the verbiage of the law.

Unfortunately, some individuals are trying to circumvent the will of Albuquerque’s citizens and seeking to create a law requiring a sick leave mandate. Only one business association has been complicit in this, and unfortunately this has given the very wrong impression that the entire Albuquerque business community is on board.

Associated Builders and Contractors of N.M. has been and remains against any sort of mandate imposed on businesses in Albuquerque – most especially small business that is the backbone of our city.

We believe that although good intentions are important, they are not sufficient on their own to produce positive policy outcomes. The temptation for activists, policymakers and the public to support policy ideas based on their perceived intentions makes knowing the outcomes of these sorts of policies even more important.

There have been numerous studies of sick leave mandates around the country, and the findings have been that mandated sick leave laws consistently have negative consequences for affected businesses. At the same time, these studies show that such laws do not produce the benefits promised by supporters. Government sick leave mandates even fail to prevent employees from coming to work sick, ostensibly the most basic goal of this requirement.

What the voters of Albuquerque understood is that this mandate, if imposed, would have been a burden on employers, causing them to reduce staff and benefits while making it harder for firms to start or expand. They also understood that universal mandates have largely negative consequences. In the end, they voted their very real feelings that the net costs to the business community would outweigh the benefits.

It is the City Council’s job to make sure that the business community is strong and thriving. It is not its job to cripple the very businesses that hire workers. While a generally well-intentioned public policy prescription, our policymakers should be wary of adopting counterproductive and ineffective paid sick leave mandates, especially when Albuquerque is already in a budget crunch. While promoters of paid sick leave mandates assure the public that forcing companies to provide mandatory leave is not only cost-free but universally beneficial, the research says just the opposite. Reaching accurate conclusions about the sick leave mandate requires a much deeper dive than the slogans of the labor activists.