Editorial: The trouble with mandating paid sick leave

It is hard to ask more of small business.

In the last year, businesses of all kinds have been stretched to the breaking point. And then they stretched further. And then many of them broke.

The neighborhood bar. Swanky restaurants where you save up for a nice night out. Theaters and shops and event venues. Few corners of industry were safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

And the employees of those companies can tell you that when the business is in jeopardy, so are the jobs.

Which is why questions are understandable when it comes to Allegheny County’s decision to require paid sick leave. The county council approved legislation to that effect Tuesday.

Because it is just as understandable for the pandemic to have driven home the importance of paid sick leave.

It cannot be denied that people worked in the last year when they should not have. People contracted covid-19 at work. People have gone to work with symptoms because they couldn’t stay home — some because the work needed to be done and some because the paycheck was too important.

Allegheny County is not wrong to try to protect the worker who needs to pay the rent, or to save the people from the unnecessary spread of disease.

But the issue is so much more complicated than a demand that any business with more than 25 employees pay a sick worker to stay home.

Counties like Allegheny and Westmoreland, municipalities like Greensburg and Tarentum and Pittsburgh — they all often chafe under the harness of the unfunded mandate. That is a requirement imposed by a higher authority but not funded by it. They saddle with responsibility while not providing means.

The paid sick leave requirement — especially for those companies that may have 25 employees but just barely, the ones that struggle with thin margins — are that kind of issue. A good idea without the structure to support it.

The vote on the measure came down to 10-4. The four votes against were not votes against waitresses and retail workers.

Council members Thomas Baker, Cindy Kirk, Sam DeMarco and John Palmiere did not vote to hurt employees. They voted to support the businesses that pay them and others that are integral circuits in the machinery of county economy.

Because after seeing so many businesses falter, it shows that the employees don’t get paid if the employer goes under.

“These folks are not in the position to pay their bills today,” DeMarco said.

That’s an idea that employers and employees should be able to understand. And leaders need to remember to balance the impact on one group while trying to help another.