The City Council is to hold a hearing Tuesday on legislation to require all city businesses to provide sick pay, a proposal that advocates laud as crucial to public health and opponents see as devastating to businesses.

The bill would require businesses to provide employees up to 72 hours, or nine days, a year for sick leave. For business with fewer than 20 workers on the payroll, the maximum number of paid sick leave hours would be 40, or five days.


Advocates estimate that at least 250,000 working New Yorkers aren't offered paid sick leave. New York would follow cities such as San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee in requiring mandatory sick pay.

"It's a good family bill," said Council Member Gale Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat who is the bill's prime sponsor. "It is very, very hard to imagine not being able to pick up your [sick] kids because you're afraid of losing your job or you are afraid of not getting paid."

Neither Council Speaker Christine Quinn nor Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken a formal position on the bill. Mr. Bloomberg supports paid sick leave conceptually, but he has said he has concerns about how small businesses would be affected by the legislation, aides said.

The bill has 35 sponsors, meaning it could withstand a mayoral veto. But without Ms. Quinn's support, it is unlikely to move forward.

Local businesses are waging a fight against the legislation, which they view as a tax and a hypocritical move by city officials who claim to be business-friendly. A new coalition spearheaded by the five borough chambers of commerce estimates that the bill would cost businesses $3 billion to $3.5 billion a year.

"This is not a real paid sick leave bill, it's a paid time off bill," said Robert Bookman, an attorney for the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association. "In this economy, we're talking about a huge new tax on businesses."

Matthew Greller, an attorney and lobbyist for the theater and temporary staffing industries, said the bill would force movie theater owners to raise ticket prices. "Unfortunately, that's going to be a reality, they don't really have much flexibility and choice," he said.

Workers say the bill would be a boost to public health.

"When the boss makes you work when you're sick, you end up infecting the food, infecting the other customers," said Maximino Santos, 46, a chef from Mexico, said in Spanish through a translator. "I myself had to buy a face mask so I wouldn't infect the food from my coughing."

Mr. Santos, who plans to testify at Tuesday's hearing, said he lost his job this year because of missed days due to bronchitis and pneumonia. "I was fired because I was sick," he said.

In response to intense criticism from the business community, Ms. Brewer made several changes to the legislation. She altered the definition of small businesses—it was companies with less than 10 workers. Now, nearly nine out of 10 companies in the city would be classified as small businesses and would be required to cover the lower number of sick pay hours.

To deal with complaints from companies that hire seasonal workers, Ms. Brewer added a requirement that workers must be on the job for 90 days to be eligible for sick leave.

Ms. Brewer and advocates said they disagree with businesses that complain that sick pay will be too costly. They point to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed, in March 2009, the average cost for sick leave per employee hour worked for private-sector employers was 23 cents. For service sector workers, the cost is even lower: 8 cents an hour, the report showed.

"We don't think it's going to cost as much as businesses contend," Ms. Brewer said.

Business owners say they know the impact on their own shops. Marc Murphy, a restaurateur whose operations include Landmarc and Ditch Plains, said the legislation would cost his company $200,000 a year. "This is just another example of how the government continues to impose regulation that costs businesses more money," he said.

Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit representing the city's business leaders, acknowledged that opposing sick pay is a tough battle for the business community to wage.

"It's like motherhood—how are you going to be against it?" Ms. Wylde said. "But we could end up losing jobs simply because employers don't have the margins to absorb these costs."

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