Facing pushback from Black aldermen and business interests, a key city panel pressed pause on a vote Monday to expand Chicago’s paid leave policies beyond other big cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
It’s likely some version of the paid leave legislation will eventually pass. It’s a key plank of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s pro-worker agenda and supporters Monday said they had the votes necessary to pass it.
The delay signaled substantive disagreement over the ordinance, however. It presents a test of whether Johnson, with the help of progressive allies, can live up to the reputation he’s tried to burnish as the city’s unifier.
Backers of the paid leave package expected a vote at the committee meeting. Instead, after brief testimony from the public and administration officials, Workforce Development Chair Mike Rodriguez, 22nd, called for a recess. When he returned, he said consideration would be postponed until Thursday morning.
“A number of council members came to me. It’s a meaty ordinance and they want to sink their teeth in to understand it more, and are committed to coming back Thursday to vote on this,” Rodriguez told reporters after the meeting. “The biggest issue: not enough time.”
Rodriguez did not say whether the ordinance might be tweaked more.
“We’ll see where things go,” he said. “We have an opportunity here to make it even better over the next couple of days, and at the end of the day, we’re going to pass a great piece of legislation … working class people shouldn’t have to pick between taking care of their children or their loved ones and potentially losing their job.”
In an emailed statement, mayoral spokesman Ronnie Reese said Johnson wants to keep working to find a compromise.
“Our administration is committed to true collaboration and co-governance with all stakeholders and looks forward to continued conversation this week around supporting workers and working families, and using the full force of government to sustain economic vitality in our city,” Reese said.
The version the committee considered Monday was itself an attempt by Johnson to find common ground with business owners and skeptical aldermen.
It would require employers to let workers accrue up to 12 days of time off annually: six days for sick time and six days for paid time off. Labor groups who supported the change said it would cement Chicago as a national leader in workers’ rights and exceed the state’s new paid leave requirements.
The ongoing debate demonstrates Johnson has work to do to assuage business community concerns.
While business groups begrudgingly accepted elimination of the city’s tipped wage after negotiations stretched out the implementation date, they came out in force late last week against the expansion of sick leave policy, arguing the new rules were too much to bear on top of rising wages, the cost of inflation and existing mandates for advance notice of worker schedules.
Johnson’s council allies could probably have pushed the ordinance through the committee in spite of the expected misgivings from business leaders. But Black aldermen also balked Monday at the new rules.
Several Black Caucus members on the workforce committee could be seen huddling in the cloak room behind council chambers during the recess.
After the meeting ended for the day with no vote, Black Caucus Chair Ald. Stephanie Coleman said she and her colleagues “wanted some additional time to have African American business owners, by way of hospitality, retail, professional services, goods and services, at the table … some Black representation at the table and just say ‘Hey, let’s pump the brakes a little bit. Let’s reconvene after Council on Wednesday so we have some time to breathe, lock everyone in the room and see what we can (do).’”
Coleman, 16th, said Rodriguez was adamant about having a vote Monday, but the Black Caucus “stood up to say” Black businesses needed to be part of negotiations. Chief among the their concerns, she said, was that smaller businesses won’t be able to afford payouts of accrued time off to exiting employees.
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, joined with business groups at Monday’s news conference, and after the delay, echoed concerns of some border aldermen who worried businesses would flee to the suburbs under the weight of the city’s regulations. “I don’t think we need to be doing anything that’s different from the state on this,” Beale said. “I think this is a rush job and we needed to put the brakes on it.”
A coalition of labor organizations pushing the ordinance — a group that includes SEIU Healthcare, AFSCME Council 31, the Chicago Federation of Labor and Arise Chicago — were also confident about a vote Monday, in part because they made several tweaks to respond to industry concerns.
Compared to when the ordinance was initially introduced, labor advocates cut down on the number of leave days workers would be entitled to from 15 days down to 12.
The group also instituted caps on how many days workers could take sick leave and dropped a requirement that employers pay out unused sick days, though kept in a requirement that businesses pay out a maximum of nine days of unused PTO.
The latest proposal also reduces city fines for violations from $2,500 for each offense to between $500 and $3,000, depending on the offense. Failure to notify employees about their time off benefits, for example would garner a smaller fine.
Those changes were not enough for business groups. Hours before the vote, roughly 40 business owners and representatives from the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association, Illinois Retail Merchants Association, Illinois Restaurant Association, grocers and restaurant owners gathered for a news conference to decry a breakdown in negotiations and said this proposal was an added straw to the camel’s back of the city’s onerous employer requirements.
They said they reached a deal with state lawmakers to mandate five days of paid leave after “years” of negotiations. While business leaders Monday said they were resigned to the fact that Chicago’s mandate would likely go further, they said they were dismayed negotiations with Chicago officials only started in earnest three weeks ago.
During public testimony before the vote, however, Bob Reiter, head of the Chicago Federation of Labor, disagreed and said labor groups started reaching out in the spring to find common ground on a deal.
Business groups were also concerned about the right of private action — or the ability for workers to sue for damages — if they did not receive their full wages. The current proposal would bar workers’ ability to sue until July 1.
In a release sent Friday, business groups said the proposal is the latest piece in an “onslaught of anti-business proposals recently passed or expected to be passed by City Council,” including elimination of the tipped wage, fair workweek legislation and the ongoing debate over the Bring Chicago Home proposal.
That’s “on top of continued supply chain and labor challenges, persistent crime and skyrocketing property taxes that leave businesses across every neighborhood struggling to make ends meet,” the business group coalition said in a release.
The labor coalition disputed the characterization almost immediately. “Since discussions began, worker advocates have made multiple and significant compromises on the number of paid time off and sick days, the structure of those days, notice and documentation requirements, necessary approvals for time off, the accrual rates for time off, the amount of time on a job necessary before time can be used, and much more,” their Friday release said.
“At each step of this process, worker advocates have attempted to find reasonable common ground with the business community to produce a deal benefiting all sides.”
aquig@chicagotribune.com