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The New American - May 9th, 2013 - On Wednesday the New York City Council voted 45-3 to pass the New York City Earned Sick Time Act, a bill that will require employers with more than 20 employees to provide five paid sick days to each of them every year while mandating that those employees using their sick days can’t be fired. The law would become effective on January 1, 2014, and companies with more than 15 employees would be required to comply with the law starting in 2015.

Even if Mayor Bloomberg vetoes the bill, the council will likely override it, making the law effective anyway. This will impact the employers of more than one million employees who currently have no paid sick days provided for them. The costs to be borne by those employers weren't provided in any public announcements.

The AFL/CIO explained why such legislation was needed:

In addition to the potential loss of wages for working families, the lack of paid sick days forces many people to go to work when they are contagious and [make] co-workers and customers sick.

No paid sick time also decreases [the] productivity for workers who show up unable to perform to their normal level of ability.

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) was joyous over the vote, calling it “a historic agreement to give over one million New Yorkers the right to take paid days off from work to care for themselves or a sick family member. The new legislation represents a major step forward for workers’ rights.” The CPD was joined by Make the Road New York; 32 BJ SEIU, the largest property service workers union; NYC City Council’s Progressive Caucus; the Working Families Party; A Better Balance; and the NY Paid Sick Leave Coalition.

Bill Lipton of the Working Families Party was equally ecstatic: "This is a sweet victory. It provides economic security for New Yorkers, and a shot in the arm for the paid sick days movement across the country."

The bill was first introduced by council member Gale Brewer, a permanent politician and long-time progressive political activist, back in July 2009 but went nowhere for nearly four years, owing to resistance by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn’s change to allow a vote coincided nicely with her announcement in March to run to succeed Mayor Bloomberg.

Brewer exulted in the victory:

After 4 years of non-stop advocacy and coalition building, I want to thank the Paid Sick Days Coalition members and my Council colleagues with all my heart for support [of my bill] and never giving up.

I also extend my thanks to Speaker Quinn and her staff for their contributions to this legislation….

The argument over [paid sick leave] was always about common sense and fairness. I believe this law enshrines the principle that American exceptionalism is not just about large profits and small elites, but a workplace that is safe, fair and respectful of the lives of workers.

Approximately one million New Yorkers will now have the fundamental right to a paid day off when they or a family member falls ill, and no worker will be fired if they must stay home. This is a tremendous accomplishment of which all fair-minded New Yorkers can be proud.

Four major cities have already passed paid sick leave laws — Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. — while similar measures are being considered in 20 others. On the national level, two other progressives, Sen. Tom Harken (D-Iowa) and Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.), are pushing the Healthy Families Act, which proposes essentially the same thing as Brewer’s bill: seven paid sick days each year required to be paid for by employers with more than 15 employees. The National Partnership for Women & Families outlined the benefits of such national legislation:

• Paid sick days provide families with economic security;

• Providing paid sick days is cost effective to employers;

• Paid sick days reduce community contagion;

• Paid sick days can decrease health care costs.

Each of these assumptions can be rebutted successfully, but none does it better than Ayn Rand, who always asked “At whose expense?” and Henry Hazlitt in his book Economics in One Lesson, which also asked about the unseen consequences of such meddling. The "broken window fallacy" is also helpful in understanding what progressives refuse to see: Someone must pay for such mandates, usually someone silent or impotent, without enough political influence to stop such “progress” — usually the taxpayers or employers unlucky enough to have a successful business large enough to be included in the mandate.

Some of the unseen consequences would naturally include higher employment costs to the business owners, as these are, in effect, pay raises to employees. The business owners' higher costs would be reflected in higher prices to consumers, which would likely reduce competitive advantage in a market niche. More likely, however, owners will discover that they can’t afford all the people working for them and will be forced to reduce their payrolls through terminations or attrition. That will increase social costs, as those no longer working will start receiving unemployment benefits provided by the state.

In the longer run, however, making employers less competitive will shrink rather than expand the general economy. Some will not hire new workers. Others may decide to retire, deciding that it’s no longer worth the effort, as government becomes more and more intrusive. Still others may choose to move out of the city, or the state, to more tax-friendly environments, further reducing the city’s economic output.

The biggest cost of all, however, is the continued and growing acceptance of government intervention as a way to solve perceived social “problems” and giving progressives more opportunities to expand the power and reach of government

Perhaps the best rebuttal is to review the bill of rights of another country, well-known to historians, which also had a progressive agenda very similar to that of Quinn, Brewer, and the AFL/CIO. It stated:

Citizens … have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality….

Citizens … have the right to rest and leisure … the reduction of the working day to seven hours … [and] the institution of annual vacations with full pay….

Citizens … have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work … ensured by the extensive development of social insurance for workers and employees. [Emphasis added.]

These are, of course, the rights enshrined in the 1936 Constitution of the USSR.

A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.

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President Obama met with Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Monday, but one of the most pressing topics for the central banker was not on the agenda.

Obama did not plan to discuss interest rates with Yellen, according to White House press secretary Josh Earnest. He argued such a conversation could undercut the chair’s independence in setting monetary policy.

“I would not anticipate that, even in the confidential setting, that the president would have a conversation with the chair of the Fed that would undermine her ability to make these kinds of critical monetary policy decisions independently,” Earnest told reporters ahead of the meeting.

The closed-door discussion is instead an opportunity to “trade notes” on broader economic trends in the U.S. and abroad, as well as on a new set of regulations on Wall Street financial firms.

Obama and Yellen talked about the growth outlook, “the state of the labor market, inequality and potential risks to the economy,” the White House said after the meeting.

Vice President Biden also attended the meeting with Yellen in the Oval Office.

The meeting comes at time when Yellen is grappling with whether to raise interest rates further amid conflicting signs about the health of the global economy.

Yellen hiked the benchmark rate to 0.25 percent last December, the first such increase since the 2008 recession.

But since then, the central bank has taken a cautious approach to further hikes.

Reserve officials left the rate unchanged last month and reduced their estimate of the number of increases that could take place this year from four to two.

Yellen said late last month the economic recovery remains on track in the U.S. despite signs of weakness abroad, such as low oil prices and anemic growth in China. Inflation has also yet to hit the Fed’s 2 percent target.

She indicated she would take a wait-and-see approach on rate hikes until the economy shows more signs of improvement.

“I consider it appropriate for the committee to proceed cautiously in adjusting policy,” she said in a speech at the Economic Club of New York.

Election-year politics could complicate the Reserve’s decision-making process.

Progressive groups are wary of further rate hikes, worried that upping the cost of borrowing could slow the pace of hiring and economic growth.

The left-leaning “Fed Up” campaign circulated a questionnaire to presidential candidates Monday asking whether the Fed “should be intentionally slowing down the economy in 2016” by raising rates.

Republican leaders have frequently accused Obama of being too reliant on Fed policy to drive the recovery, which they say hasn’t spread to large segments of the economy.

Obama hasn’t publicly commented on interest rates. But he has sounded a more optimistic tone than Yellen on the economy, trumpeting a string of positive employment reports and rising wages.

Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist for Biden, expressed confidence Yellen would be able to insulate her decision-making from the political debate. 

“The Yellen Fed, and particularly Chair Yellen herself, has been extremely data-driven, and I expect that to continue,” he said.

“What will be motivating her is less electoral politics and more the actual state of the real economy,” he added. “People worried about the fed loosening in an election year to help the incumbent party. I don’t think that is in play this year.”

Did you know 67% of all job growth comes from small businesses? Read More

Obama does not meet frequently with the Fed chair to discuss the economy. Yellen’s last one-on-one sit-down with the president occurred in early November 2014.

“I think the president has been pleased with the way that she has fulfilled what is a critically important job,” Earnest said.

Even while he offered praise for Yellen, the spokesman said Obama “cares deeply about preserving both the appearance of and the fact of the independence of the Federal Reserve and the chair.”

By Jordan Fabian

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More than 300 health care activists, disability rights advocates, and organizers gathered on second floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Monday morning to oppose Senate Republicans’ Graham-Cassidy health care bill.

The bill would sharply reduce spending for Medicaid by billions of dollars by tying it to medical inflation, blow up Obamacare’s marketplaces, and open the door for states to curtail protections for patients with preexisting conditions.

Read the full article here.

A group of 22 progressive economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz urged the Federal Reserve to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to consider raising its 2 percent inflation target.

In a letter to Chair Janet Yellen and the rest of the Fed board released on Friday, the economists argued that a higher objective would give the central bank more room to combat downturns in the economy without unduly hurting Americans’ living standards.

Read the full article here.