Healthy Workers, Healthy Businesses: A Small Business Analysis of Earned Paid Sick Time in New York City

Abstract

[Excerpt] Earned paid sick time is an issue that affects a significant proportion of workers and employers in New York City, including small business owners and their employees. According to a 2011 survey, fully half of working New Yorkers do not have access to any earned paid sick time. An estimated 41 percent – between 1.4 and 1.6 million workers in New York – do not have access to any paid time off at all, whether for illness, vacation, or other uses. Lack of access to earned paid sick time disproportionately impacts small businesses and their employees in low-income, Latino, and immigrant neighborhoods, including neighborhoods such as Bushwick, Brooklyn, Jackson Heights and Corona, Queens and Port Richmond, Staten Island. According to a recent survey conducted by the Community Service Society of New York, about two-thirds (64 percent) of low-income workers in New York did not have access to any earned paid sick time in 2011. More than three quarters (76 percent) of low-income Latino workers had no earned paid sick time coverage (compared to 61 percent of low-income white workers). And more than two thirds (70 percent) of low-income immigrant workers had no earned paid sick time coverage (compared to 61 percent of U.S.-born workers).