CHICAGO – In their second high-stakes meeting in a week, Chicago aldermen on Thursday night approved a new ordinance mandating paid sick leave for all city workers. The ordinance was the only item on the council’s agenda after two pro-business aldermen used a parliamentary manoeuvre to delay an expected vote on the measure from an earlier meeting on Tuesday.
Cheers erupted in the council chamber as Mayor Brandon Johnson, himself one of the bill’s sponsors, announced that the “Chicago Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance” had passed 36-12.
“Well done, everybody,” Johnson said at a press conference immediately after the council meeting, thanking many of the bill’s aldermanic sponsors and supporting organised labour groups such as the Service Employees International Union.
The ordinance is the most sweeping of its kind in the nation, although Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a similar state-level bill in March that mandates five paid sick days for all Illinois workers starting in 2024.
The Chicago version goes further – it mandates that all private employers in Chicago provide employees with at least 10 days of paid time off per year, including five sick days and five vacation days, starting December 31. Its passage marks the second time this week that the progressive mayor and his allies have successfully pushed a major policy goal through the City Council. The first was on Tuesday, when the council approved placing the Bring Chicago Home Act – which would raise transfer taxes on properties sold in the city for more than $1 million – as a referendum on the March 2024 ballot.
Under the new law, employers can choose to give workers all ten days immediately. Otherwise, workers will accrue one hour of sick leave and one hour of vacation time for every 35 hours worked. Chicago city law already required employers to provide employees with five sick days per year, and the new ordinance also allows for some annual rollover – all five sick days and up to two vacation days.
It also requires large companies with 100 or more employees to pay workers for unused vacation time when they quit or are fired. Medium-sized companies with between 51 and 100 employees will get a slight reprieve on this front; they will only have to pay out two days of unused time to departing employees until 2024, before having to pay out all unused time from 2025. Companies with 50 or fewer employees are exempt from paying out unused leave to departing employees.
Despite these new benefits, the ordinance passed on Thursday night represents a watered-down version of the bill the sponsors originally introduced earlier this year. That version called for 15 paid sick days for workers – an unacceptable number of hours for Chicago’s capitalist class, though still less time off than workers in France and Britain enjoy.
Months of negotiations between the bill’s sponsors and supporters and Chicago businesses and their aldermanic allies resulted in the 10-day compromise, along with several other concessions. For example, the new law doesn’t require Chicago businesses of any size to pay departing employees for their unused sick time. It also gives employers a one-year grace period before employees can sue them for wrongfully denying leave.
However, at the time of its passage, several Chicago-area business organisations continued to oppose it. A major point of contention was that while the ordinance requires workers to wait until January 2025 before they can sue their bosses for denying them vacation time, it allows workers to sue for sick leave starting this New Year’s Eve. In a statement released earlier this week, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce called the threat of lawsuits “dangerous” for employers.
“Businesses, especially small businesses without robust human resources departments, will be exposed to the threat of private lawsuits. The small business payout exemption contained in the proposal does not extend to this dangerous private right of action language contained in the regulation,” the Chamber said.
An opponent of the ordinance, 42nd Ward alderman Brendan Reilly – one of the business community’s most prominent allies at City Hall and one of two aldermen who tabled the vote from Tuesday’s meeting – even tried to add a last-minute pro-business amendment to the ordinance before the vote. Saying that businesses had “waved the white flag” on the new ordinance and just wanted some additional legal protection, his amendment would have given employers a 30-day grace period before employees could sue them for alleged violations of the new law.
“They’re asking for this one small provision so that this regulation does not become a litigation jackpot,” Reilly said.
His attempt to add the new language to the ordinance failed when one of the bill’s sponsors, 28th Ward alderman Jason Ervin, successfully tabled the proposal for discussion by the Workforce Development Committee at a later date.
Contrary to Reilly’s representation of business interests, a director of one of the groups that helped shape the new ordinance said during the meeting that employers’ concerns shouldn’t come before workers’.
“We have come a long way from our original proposal … yet the defenders of big business and corporations remain opposed to this measure,” said Ugo Ukere, policy director for the labour advocacy group Raise the Floor Alliance. “Their reasoning is that it’s too much too soon. I’ve heard that over and over again, that it’s too much too soon, and I’m tired of hearing it. Aldermen, I ask you, is it too much to allow workers to take time off to care for a sick family member?”
Judging by the overwhelming support the measure received on Thursday, most of the council agreed with Ukere.
“If Covid taught us anything, it’s that workers need time off,” said 22nd Ward alderman Michael Rodriguez, the ordinance’s prime sponsor, before the vote.