Popular Isn’t Always Practical – The Fight Over Paid Sick Leave : An Ohio Case Study

Populism.  It seems to be the mechanism du jour for labor these days.  Ohio’s business community was faced with an aggressive populist campaign in 2008 at the ballot that was focused on creating a mandate requiring seven days of mandatory paid sick leave for Ohio employers with more than 25 employees.  An almost identical measure is facing the entire country in the Healthy Families Act.

The Council of Smaller Enterprises (COSE) a 17,000+ small business membership organization based in Cleveland, Ohio servicing the businesses of Northeast Ohio was out early against this issue in late 2007.  In addition to requiring seven days of paid sick leave, the ballot issue further allowed sick time to be taken with no notice and in the smallest increment of time an employer’s payroll system tracked.  For many employers that was a ten minute increment, and an hour was the highest increment allowed under the proposed law.

There were a myriad of other issues with this flawed legislation. One of the most significant was a prohibition in the law of the use of sick leave as a factor in any wage action, performance review or termination process.  This clause essentially opened employers to lawsuits over any perceived slight that could be linked to an employees’ use of paid sick time.

The proponents of this issue were both well funded and had the benefit of a populist appeal—featuring ads of sick children headlined by phrases like “Paid Sick Leave: We’ve earned them.  Our families need them.”  Even though 88.5% of small business employees already had some type of paid leave available, the issue came out of the gates polling with 70%+ support and over the course of the campaign dropped no lower than the low 60’s.  However, polling data indicated that if we could help voters understand the negative impact on small business in Ohio and could educate them about the resulting loss of jobs in our state, we could beat Issue 4.

Over eight months, COSE worked with a statewide coalition of business concerns that mobilized grassroots educational efforts with employers and employees.  From an employer resource kit to academic research (http://delicious.com/COSESmallBiz), to videos featuring employees as well as radio and television ads, the business community worked hard to educate voters on the negative economic consequences for our state.

Just a day or so before the filing deadline for the November ballot, the Governor of Ohio—a  popular Democrat—under enormous pressure from business interests, was  successful in his request to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the main proponent behind this issue, to pull the issue from the ballot.  In an election year with a nominee for President who was in full support of the measure, Governor Strickland understood that though popular, this initiative would hurt Ohio’s competitiveness nationally and disadvantage our state.  His rationale, with Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown at his side, was that he and the Senator would fight for passage at the national level where a national “level playing field” could be created.

So – Ohio and its small business community dodged a bullet.  But, the fight will continue on the national stage with the Healthy Families Act.  We’ll see you there!