Sick leave laws become problem for small business

For small businesses, paid sick leave is about to become an issue if it isn’t already. President Barack Obama, following a trend established by 36 cities and states nationwide, signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to offer seven paid sick days. The order will go into effect in January 2017 and affect 828,000 workers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

For now, the nation is dotted with different requirements. Los Angeles now requires six days paid leave. San Francisco requires nine days paid leave. The state of California requires three days paid leave.

For mom-and-pop businesses with few employees, new regulations can have unintended consequences.

In St. Paul, where a new sick leave policy went into effect in September 2016, one wedding shop owner told the Pioneer Press that the regulations changed the way he does business. Since he can’t raise prices to be competitive, and new laws are adding to his costs, he has stopped hiring employees and started using contractors.

The St. Paul sick leave law is based on hours worked prompting other employers to say they would have to cut hours. In addition, business owners said the law left them at a disadvantage when competing with retailers in nearby Minneapolis.

For small businesses with 50 employees, different regulations in different states and locales, have caused some chaos in Human Resources. If employees work in locales with differing laws, HR is faced with the problem of the same job generating few sick days, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The situation has, not unexpectedly, resulted in a call for a national standard. According to the Labor Department, 64 percent of private-sector workers have at least one paid sick day. That is up from 61 percent in 2015.