Represented: Paid Sick Time



REPRESENTED

Think Out Loud is traveling to cities and towns across the state to hear about the policy issues that matter to Oregonians. How do the decisions of lawmakers in Salem affect our lives? See our full coverage here.

Portland has a paid sick leave policy, and Eugene passed a local law last year that's set to go into effect in July. Both inspired contentious debate over how businesses and workers would be impacted. That same debate has been going on in Salem as lawmakers discuss the possibility of a statewide policy on paid sick leave. If that happens, it will preempt the Eugene ordinance, which puts employers in that city in a bit of an awkward position. The Eugene City Council passed a mandatory paid sick leave ordinance that would apply to all businesses, even those with only one employee. The statewide policy would likely apply to businesses with ten or more employees.

Mike Nesbitt is the president of Papa’s Pizza Parlor, which has several locations around Oregon. He says it's important to make a distinction between full-time and part-time workers.

"The case can absolutely be made that if somebody is working full time at my pizza parlor, 40 hours a week, they will suffer if they have to miss a day of work, and so something needs to be done for them," he says.

But part-time workers often have the opportunity to trade shifts at Papa's, which Nesbitt says makes paid sick time unnecessary for those employees.

"If they miss time because they're sick and want to make up that time, they have ample opportunity to do that."

Rep. Paul Holvey (D-Eugene) points out that shift trading would still be an option under the proposed statewide policy.

"If the employer and employee both agree to it, we certainly do allow that without the use of paid sick time," he said.

Holvey says he wouldn't want to craft a policy that didn't include part-time workers.

"We don’t want to see employers employing all part-time employees in order to stay out of compliance with this new legislation," he explained.

Philip Carrasco and his wife, Jessica Allphin, both have part-time jobs and neither of them had the option of taking paid sick time this past winter when their kids got sick.

"It really is a major stressor for a family," Carrasco says. "We have a six-year-old and a 15-month-old and if one got sick, then it made the rounds...Sometimes we would still go to work despite being sick."

In addition to working with Oregon AFL-CIO, Carrasco is the Young Fathers Program Coordinator at Catholic Community Services of Lane County, which recently announced that employees will get paid sick time starting this summer.

Some employers would prefer to offer the more flexible option of paid time off, which could be used for sick days, vacation, or any reason an employee wanted to take time off. Sabrina Parsons is the CEO of Palo Alto Software in Eugene and she offers all 55 of her employees at least 3 weeks of paid time off.

"I feel like an employee should be able to decide how they want to use their time and it should have nothing to do with me," says Parsons.

Parsons supports a statewide paid sick time policy. She explains, "I think something more flexible is absolutely better, but at this point anything is better than nothing."

Dennis Morgan disagrees. He's the he vice president of research for Renewable Resource Group, which does water and environmental testing for Lane County. He is concerned that if he's forced to offer his employees paid time off rather than paid sick leave, that will give them an incentive to lie about why they're taking time away from work.

"If someone wants to go do something else, we don't want them telling us they're sick," he says. "We'd rather have them take the paid time off that they've accrued rather than lie to us."

Rep. Andy Olson (R-Albany) shares Morgan's concern. He says a mandated paid sick leave policy could hurt the relationship between employers and employees.

"Let’s face it, in every profession, every position that you consider, you’re going to have bad apples," he said. "The abuse of this is going to occur."

Holvey says there are ways to guard against employees misusing paid sick leave.

"If an employer suspects that an employee is abusing this, they have the right to ask for medical verification," he said.

"As a person who works for an hourly wage, particularly people who don't make a lot per hour, it is very difficult to decide to stay home and take care of yourself rather than go and work," says Erin Zygaitis who works as a floral manager at Rhythm & Blooms flower shop in Eugene.

Lawmakers are still negotiating a statewide sick leave policy, trying to balance the needs of workers with the concerns of employers.