.jpg;w=960)
All business owners in Colorado will be required to provide paid sick leave for their employees starting on January 1, 2022, an amendment from the current legislation which only applies to businesses with more than 16 employees. Although the extent of this law’s economic impact is unknown for now, some individuals fear it will add to the various financial burdens small business owners already are facing.
According to a Colorado General Assembly press release, the new law will require all employers to pay up to a maximum of 48 paid sick leave hours a year per employee — one hour accrued for every 30 hours worked with accrual beginning the moment of employment. Employees have the right to use paid sick leave hours as they are accrued or carry up to 48 hours forward to be used in subsequent calendar years.
Reasons for an employee to use their accrued paid sick leave hours and be absent from work — as outlined in the press release — include tending to a mental or physical illness, injury or health condition; caring for family members with a health issue; for purposes related to the employee or a family member who is a victim of sexual abuse, sexual assault or harassment or if a public official has ordered the closure of the employee’s child’s place of care or the employee’s place of business due to a public health emergency.
In the event of a public health emergency, the amount of sick leave an employee receives is based on the number of hours that employee works, according to the news release.
To learn more about the new paid sick leave law’s requirements, visit the Colorado General Assembly website.
After a year of requiring only Colorado businesses with 16 or more employees to abide by the aforementioned requirements, the new law will call for all business owners, no matter the size of their staff, to provide paid sick leave starting in the new year.
According to Scott Cook, CEO of the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce, or LACC, members of LACC were preoccupied during a public policy meeting earlier this year as they pondered the potentially negative impacts the new law might have on small businesses in Longmont.
Specifically, Cook worries are centered around small business owners in the community suffering from a “compounding effect,” or high stress levels caused by trying to maintain their business’ survival during a period of time when several new state regulations have come into effect and the marketplace has seen supply chain issues, rising property taxes, rising product costs and COVID-19 regulations, he said.
While hosting a LACC Employers Council meeting, Cook spoke with local business owners who conveyed their growing concerns about the imminent paid sick leave law and regulations which have been or are scheduled to be enacted in Colorado.
Throughout the meeting, employers reported having bigger financial burdens placed on them every time a new workplace regulation gets passed in Colorado, Cook said, citing the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act — implemented on January 1, 2021 — and a family and medical leave program that’s scheduled to be enacted in January, 2023.
Although he maintains the LACC is not opposed to the implementation of paid sick leave or other regulations which benefit employees, Cook recognizes “it takes a small business some time to adjust to a number of different changes happening over a short period of time and we’re talking about a lot of added pressure to a small business owner (within the past few years) that they didn’t have before,” he said. “(LACC) has always said that we need to be careful about what we’re asking employers to do.”
For Alec Schuler, owner of Tangerine Restaurants, the compounding effect within the past couple years has felt like “weathering repeated storms that keep hitting us for costs,” he said.
According to Schuler, the whirlwind of revenue-threatening events started with the 2017 Minimum Wage Act — in compliance with this regulation, Schuler tacked on an additional $5 to service employees’ hourly wage — then continued with the COVID-19 restrictions and, now, he faces the new paid sick leave law.
Supplementing a budget so that all 90 of Tangerine’s employees will have paid sick leave, Schuler said, will most likely increase his labor costs and, eventually, those higher costs will translate to prices that customers see on the restaurants’ menus.
“It’s going to be hard,” he said. “It’s just yet another brick that I have to carry on my back.”
In attempts to protect Longmont small business owners from experiencing the compounding effect, Cook and LACC suggested and requested that small businesses be exempt from the paid sick leave law requirements. However, their efforts were unsuccessful.
“Every day, (LACC) talks to businesses that are struggling,” Cook said, “so we never know when the next regulation or the next supply chain issue or the next cost increase, whatever it may be, might be the final blow for that business. (LACC is) not opposed to paid sick leave in its own right — we’re concerned about the overall burden that a small business owner bears.”
According to Cook, workplace regulations should seek a balance between what’s good for employers and what’s good for employees — while also keeping in mind that employees always do better when their employer is financially healthy, he said. “When the pendulum swings one way (toward employers or employees’ needs), that can lead to more, sometimes overly costly legislation.”
