A key Chicago City Council panel on Thursday advanced an expansive paid leave ordinance that will require employers to offer 10 days off to workers, though opponents in Chicago’s business community say concessions within the deal don’t go far enough.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, his progressive Council allies and business leaders have been negotiating an agreement on paid leave for months. The latest version of the proposal calls for five sick days and five vacation days each year for all employees. Johnson and union supporters originally sought 15 days of paid time off.
The city had appeared close to a deal last week but hit an impasse with business groups that remain largely opposed to a provision requiring companies to pay out unused time to workers who leave their jobs.
Under the plan that passed the Council’s Committee on Workforce Development, companies with 100 or more workers would be required to pay out up to seven days of unused time when employees leave.
There would be a two-year phase-in for companies with 51 to 100 employees to pay departing workers for unused time, while companies with 50 or fewer employees wouldn’t be on the hook for those payouts. Johnson initially pushed for the payout exemption to apply only to businesses with 10 or fewer workers.
The committee advanced the paid leave measure by a vote of 13-2, teeing it up for a full Council vote next week. The plan also calls for employees to be entitled to roll over up to 10 sick days and two vacation days per year.
The mayor’s floor leader, Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), argued the ordinance would keep the city from “falling behind” a state law that takes effect Jan. 1 guaranteeing five days of leave for workers across Illinois. The city now guarantees five days only for sick time.
“We definitely don’t want workers in the city of Chicago to not have the same rights and benefits as workers in other major American cities,” Ramirez-Rosa said, while downplaying the impact of an ordinance that business leaders argue is among the most generous of any big city in the country.
“We’re not doing anything here that other cities haven’t already done in some form or fashion,” he said, pointing to a similar ordinance in San Francisco. “Those cities continue to thrive. The sky has not fallen.”
Johnson, who was in Washington, D.C., Thursday to discuss the city’s burgeoning migrant housing crisis with federal leaders, said in a statement his office “worked collaboratively to find a compromise, and we ended up with the most progressive Paid Leave policy in the country that will help businesses retain workers and help workers live full lives with dignity.”
But several business groups, including the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association and the Illinois Restaurant Association, issued a scathing statement saying the ordinance “will devastate the very businesses they have been trying to attract to their communities.”
“We regularly hear about the need to attract and retain businesses like restaurants, grocery stores, and pharmacies in underserved neighborhoods, and we’re already fighting an uphill battle to fill the exorbitantly high vacancies left by the COVID-19 pandemic in commercial corridors across the city,” those leaders said.
“With Chicago on the verge of adopting the most complicated and expensive form of paid leave in the country, businesses of every size and sector will be left with no choice but to take their operations — and jobs — elsewhere.”
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) — one of two “no” votes Thursday along with Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th) — slammed proponents for not analyzing the proposal’s potential economic impact. The ordinance calls for a study to be conducted at the end of 2024.
“By the time you all finish a study ... we might be losing businesses. We’re putting the cart before the horse,” Beale said. “When you look at the surrounding wards that butt up against the suburbs — we’re already losing business, and it’s already hurting us. We know how it affects us on the border wards. This is going to make matters worse.”
Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th), a supporter of the ordinance and a small-business owner, said fellow employers “just never stop working, but that does not mean that our employees have to” do the same.
“I don’t think it’s right that people cannot take time off to be with their families, to take care of someone else’s family. We should all have time off,” she said.
Ald. Michael Rodriguez (22nd), the Workforce Development Committee chairman, said he’d call the ordinance for a full Council vote at its regular meeting next Tuesday.
Also on that agenda will be a referendum question Beale and Ald. Ray Lopez (15th) want added to next year’s primary ballot asking voters if Chicago should remain a sanctuary city.
Beale and Lopez tried to force a vote on the issue during a special Council session called by Beale that sputtered along in parliamentary confusion for almost two hours after the committee vote.
After several starts and stops, Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) — the council’s president pro tempore, leading the meeting in Johnson’s absence — declared the body didn’t have the necessary 26-member quorum and adjourned the meeting over heated objections from Beale and Lopez.
