Opponents of the City Council’s universal paid sick days bill have touted what at first appears to be an alarming price tag. According to their estimates, the proposed City Council legislation would cost the city’s businesses $8.8 billion, (or as Crain’s New York pointed out – about 1.6% of gross city product).
Advocates for the groundbreaking legislation say the real cost is likely to be much, much less – just 3.8% of the business groups’ figure.
What explains the discrepancy? Kevin Miller, Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research breaks it down in a letter sent this week to the City Council:
“There are several ways in which the Chambers’ estimate utilizes erroneous assumptions to reach a vastly inflated cost figure.These errors are multiplicative, not additive; the impact of each mistaken assumption is multiplied by the impacts of the others, resulting in the massive difference between the two estimates.” (Bold his)
According to Miller, the $8.8 billion figure mistakenly includes the millions of workers who already get paid sick days, treats part-time workers as full-time employees, assumes every worker will use every sick day available (studies shows that this is far from the case) — and then, just for good measure, adds over a million people to the city’s workforce who simply do not exist.
