After a week of behind the scenes wrangling, the Senate gave its final approval to the paid sick leave bill Wednesday.
When it came down to it, the big question facing the Senate was whether to totally exempt small businesses from the provisions of the legislation.
A week ago, the Senate voted for what many people thought was the final version of this bill. The legislation calls for all businesses to provide their employees with at least three days of paid leave time beginning next year. This time period is expanded to five days after two years.
Seasonal employees are not covered by the bill and small businesses with five or fewer employees are exempt from the legislation until 2018.
Senate President John Campbell said the bill was basically a health care issue.
“A way to provide a safe workplace,” Campbell explains. “Safe from someone, a work colleague, coming in with a cold or a virus or the flu from going ahead and spreading it to other members of the workforce."
The Senate voted 21 to eight in favor of the bill but then Washington Sen. Bill Doyle used a rare parliamentary procedure to reconsider a part of the bill that involves small businesses.
"A way to provide a safe workplace, safe from someone, a work colleague, coming in with a cold or a virus or the flu from going ahead and spreading it to other members of the workforce." — Senate President John Campbell
Doyle backed an effort to make the temporary small business exemption a permanent part of the legislation.
Sen. Campbell offered a compromise. He called on the Department of Labor to study the impact that the legislation would have on these small businesses and report back to the Legislature next January.
"Is it one that will be so great that it will cause them to close their doors and thus have employees without jobs,” says Campbell. “Or is it one where they may already offer the benefit and therefore this bill will not pertain to them?"
"It is somewhat disingenuous in my eyes to pass a bill that assumes one thing and then calls for a study to determine whether or not that assumption is correct." — Caledonia Sen. Joe Benning
But Caledonia Sen. Joe Benning said Campbell's labor study should have been done before the Senate ever debated this bill.
"I am concerned that it turns our responsibilities on its head,” Benning says. “It is somewhat disingenuous in my eyes to pass a bill that assumes one thing and then calls for a study to determine whether or not that assumption is correct."
The House approved a similar bill last session. But since the House version is somewhat different from the Senate bill, a conference committee might be needed to resolve the differences.
