A little more than a month ago, Milwaukeeans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a referendum mandating that businesses provide paid sick time. Larger employers would have to provide workers with nine days per year, smaller firms must offer five. Since the vote, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has been mounting a lawsuit against the measure, but that’s not where the backlash ends. Surrounding communities are beginning to pass legislation prohibiting similar ordinances. WUWM’s LaToya Dennis has the story.
It started with West Allis.
“I called up, called up the city administrator and I said, well what can we do to prevent what Milwaukee is going through here?”
That’s Ald. Michael Czaplewski .
“And he said what we’ll do is pass an ordinance, you know, saying that they can’t do that. And so he said all we need is a sponsor, and so I said I’ll sponsor,” Czaplewski says.
The West Allis Common Council passed the legislation that Czaplewski backed. It prohibits the city from imposing wage and benefit requirements on businesses there. He says the reason for supporting such an ordinance is simple.
“Businesses can’t afford this. Truthfully, it’s not even good for employees simply because they, they don’t realize that business has to make money somehow,” Czaplewski says.
Czaplewski says he wouldn’t be surprised to see businesses leave Milwaukee, a notion South Milwaukee Ald. Michael McCarthy fully agrees with. He and his peers were set to vote on a similar measure last night. He says wage and benefit mandates should be left up to state and federal governments.
“I don’t think the city should dictate to any private business what wages should be set, what benefits should be provided. The state covers minimum wages. Hopefully, something will be done regarding health insurance in the future,” McCarthy says.
Steve Baas is not surprised to see municipalities reacting to the paid sick days mandate in Milwaukee. Baas is with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. It plans to file a lawsuit challenging the Milwaukee ordinance.
“I think after seeing what happened in Milwaukee this fall and the kind of impending economic disaster that the mandatory sick leave ordinance would put on us. I think other cities are going to be looking at ways to protect themselves from that sort of terrorism,” Baas says.
The director of 9 to 5, the organization that pushed the paid sick days measure in Milwaukee, says people are unnecessarily fearful. Amy Stear says in places such as San Francisco where paid sick days has been on the books for nearly two years, there hasn’t been any negative fallout.
“We believe that protective measures such as paid sick days for working people are very good, not just for those families of the workers, but also for the businesses they work for,” Stear says.
The target implementation date in Milwaukee is February 12th.
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