Pirate's Cove

This is what happens when you legislate with emotion and pandering, not common sense, experience, or knowledge of how business works

Lawmakers want every worker in New York to get three months paid bereavement leave to mourn the loss of a loved one. But many business owners say it could be crippling. @MKramerTV reports: https://t.co/w4ux4aYldx

— CBS New York (@CBSNewYork) August 3, 2018

From the link

Lawmakers want every worker in New York to get three months paid bereavement leave to mourn the loss of a loved one.

But many business owners say it could be crippling. Will Gov. Andrew Cuomo sign it into law?

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Richard Funke, of upstate Batavia, whose son died.

“I’ve experienced the pain of losing a child. The grief can be unpredictable and overwhelming,” he said in a statement. “No employee should have to fear losing their job in order to take the time they need to mourn.”

Sen. David Carlucci, of Clarkstown, is cosponsoring the bill, which quietly passed at the end of the legislative session and is awaiting action by the governor.

“We need to make it as easy as possible, be humane and understand the real cost involved in losing a loved one,” said Carlucci.

The bill covers the death of a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, in-law, grandparent or grandchild.

The law, if passed, phases in what workers can collect between 50 to 67 percent of the average weekly wage — $680 a week.

While I think most of us can sympathize and empathize, this would force a company to pay an employee to not work for this period of time, and cause lots of other problems

But Greg Greenwood, owner of Bleeker Street Pizza, said it could cripple mom and pop stores.

“Our business and any other small business it would be catastrophic. Twelve weeks paid leave. We need all the staff that we have,” he said.

He said the biggest problem would be training new people, then letting them go when the old employee comes back.

Another option would be to simply leave the position open till the person returns. But, that would mean a small business would be running shorthanded for three months, as so many typically run a razor’s edge margin of employees. Back in the day when I worked in wireless, if someone was out on vacation for a week it meant that the others either worked more hours to cover, but we’d still be have problems taking care of customers during the busy times. There was a point we could do temp workers simply to take payments, but, it’s way to involved for that now.

I guess we’ll see whether Cuomo signs this bill, one which panders to a certain set of voters and is based on emotion.