By ROXIE SILVERSTEIN, age 9, and Mentor, ELIZABETH KUSTER
Now, 1.2 million working people in New York City will receive paid leave when they are sick. PHOTO: Steve Rhodes
New York City’s newly passed paid sick leave law, which went into effect April 1, 2014, will make sure working people will get paid when they’re sick and can’t go to work.
“It’s a relief,” Blair Phoenix, a cook at a restaurant, told the New York Times. “It gives you room to breathe.”
If the employer refuses to give the money to the worker when they’re sick and can’t go to work, the employer is now breaking the law.
Before the law was passed, workers could be sick and they don’t get as much money as they would have if they weren’t sick. But now people can get the money when they’re sick.
Now, 1.2 million working people in New York City will receive paid leave when they are sick.
Not all businesses are happy with the law. If a worker is sick, the business owner gets less money because they have to pay a worker who stays home sick, as well as those who are actually working.
“What I see every day is that their bottom line is getting thinner and thinner,” Linda Baran the President and CEO of Staten Island Chamber of Commerce said following the vote, to AM New York. “That’s a concern.”
Nevertheless, 1.2 million workers will now have more financial security under this new law.
