SAN ANTONIO – The commission dedicated to discuss the city's Paid Sick Leave policy met on Wednesday to discuss how to revamp the ordinance to fix perceived problems within.
- Commission met Wednesday to discuss
- City judge pushed ordinance to December 1
- Deadline for revamp is November 7
What must the 13-member Paid Sick Leave Commission try to do to revamp the paid sick leave ordinance? “Help the ordinance be free of challenge,” said Danielle Hargrove, Paid Sick Leave Commission Chair.
Wednesday morning, the commission met to begin discussions on how to revamp the current paid leave ordinance, seen by city and business lawyers as flawed.
Last week, a state district judge allowed the City to push back the paid sick leave ordinance rollout to December 1.
The ordinance was originally scheduled to take affect August 1. Business groups filed a lawsuit contesting the new city policy.
“This is a financial burden on employers, so we want to address all of those concerns,” said the commission chair.
One of those employers is a member of the commission.
Commissioner Lisa Fullerton owns a business with 70-80 employees when fully staffed.
Fullerton raised an issue with the way the current ordinance is drafted: “Two questions you ask yourself is, ‘do I raise my prices or do I eliminate some of the benefits I currently have?’”
On the other side of the debate, on the same commission, is labor activist Joleen Garcia.
“What I am trying to do is make sure we stay faithful to what the city council passed,” said Garcia, “What the mayor says he supports.”
Changes discussed at Wednesday’s meeting included definition of an employee, hours worked to qualify for sick leave and how to measure the size —small, medium, large— of a company based upon number of employees.
Hargrove said, “The issue here now is putting it a holistic document,” Hargrove said.
The chair is giving the commission 45 days to modify ordinances changes.
The city council is looking to November 7 as a deadline to approve the final ordinance. Just down the interstate, the City of Austin has a lawsuit filed by businesses pending before the Texas Supreme Court.
Earlier this week, Austin-based conservative think-tank Texas Public Policy Foundation sued on behalf of two businesses in federal court to block the Dallas ordinance requiring businesses to offer their employees paid sick leave.