On Friday Feb. 14th, Nancy
Ploeger testified at the Council hearing on Friday regarding the Council's new
amended paid sick leave bill extending requirements to all businesses with 5 or
more employees. She was representing 5 Borough Chamber of Commerce
Coalition created four years ago to be the voice of small businesses in our
city.
The Coalition created a panel
to testify as to the burdens of this bill and unintended consequences. Others
on the panel included Victor Wong, The Partnership for New York City, Rob
Bookman, the NYC Hospitality Alliance, Zulay Mateo, the Bodega Association USA,
and Zulema Wiscovitch, the National Supermarket Association.
The main point of the bill is
now extending it to affect all businesses with 5 or more employees, mandating
businesses to pay 5 paid sick days.
All of us testified as to the
fact that this new bill was issued without discussion, after we had spent over
4 years at the table fighting for a balanced piece of legislation and
negotiating the current bill which affects employers with over 20 employees with
a phase in for those with 15+ employees in six months. In addition points were
made regarding the Council's wish to enact this effective April 1 without rules
even being written as yet, without spelling out the consequences if a business
should not be in compliance and even without staff at the DCA in place yet to
handle this.
In addition, we asked that the
implementation be pushed back at least 9 months (the length of time businesses
had to get ready for compliance for the current bill). Council and the
administration want this to go in effect in less than 48 days.
Please find both our testimony and press release posted on our website.
If you would like more
information on the issue and/or would be willing to tell us your story and how
this will affect your business, please send an email to info@manhattancc.org
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