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Coalition wants voters to mandate paid leave; competing campaigns might be bad for Ohio
By Paula Schleis
Beacon Journal business writer
Published on Monday, Aug 11, 2008
Maybe you've heard something about the Ohio Healthy Families Act, perhaps even signed a petition to get it on the November ballot.
Or maybe you know little to nothing about a movement that would guarantee most Ohio workers up to seven days of paid sick leave each year.
Don't worry. You'll have time to join the debate.
A coalition supporting paid sick leave submitted more than 240,000 signatures to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner last week.
If at least 120,683 of those names prove valid — it will take about two weeks to know for sure — then voters will decide the fate of the issue, affecting companies that employ at least 25 people.
To make its case, Ohioans for Healthy Families is promising a multimillion-dollar statewide television and radio campaign.
It's already previewing its first TV spot on its Web site, http://www.sickdaysohio.org. The ad features a mother agonizing over whether to stay home and care for an ill child, or go to work to earn her day's pay.
Expect Ohio's business advocates to fire back.
Groups from the statewide Ohio Roundtable to Northeast Ohio's own Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network have gone on record, arguing that a mandated benefit could increase labor costs for some businesses up to 15 percent, while crippling the state's ability to compete for new and expanding businesses.
Coalition spokesperson Dale Butland predicts: ''We will be outspent. There is no question in my mind that business groups will have no trouble raising millions of dollars to keep people from getting paid sick days.
''But that's OK. We're starting with 71 percent supporting this,'' he said, referring to a recent poll.
Compromise sought
Gov. Ted Strickland said the early polls indicate the issue ''would likely pass with a fairly strong majority,'' but he noted that neither side has yet launched its campaign.
And for his part, the Democratic governor is hoping the ballot issue will become moot.
He said he has been in daily contact with coalition and business representatives and hasn't given up on bringing them together to work out a compromise bill to put before the General Assembly.
''As I see it, there are two options facing us,'' Strickland said.
One is for both sides to spend lots of money ''spreading the word that Ohio is unfriendly to business'' in a nasty campaign whose outcome is not guaranteed, he said.
The other is to ''come together, work in good faith and find a common-sense solution to this that may not be fully satisfying to either side, but be good for Ohio and protect Ohio's reputation and Ohio's business climate in a way that would be attractive for job growth,'' he said.
While talks earlier this year between the coalition and business leaders fell apart, ''I think the environment and the climate has changed very significantly,'' Strickland said.
The debate isn't Ohio's alone.
Similar measures have been adopted by San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and proposed in a dozen state legislatures. Last month, sick-days campaign leaders from across the country gathered in the nation's capital to share strategies.
Ohio is the only state seeking a ballot initiative this year.
Some members of Congress — supported by a 2007 Harvard study of 145 countries that found 127 of them offered at least one week of paid sick leave a year — have sought to make the issue a federal one.
Strickland wishes they would.
Only a national standard would even the playing field and ease Strickland's fears that business leaders might have a point about work-force mandates slowing Ohio's economic recovery.
In any case, the issue is expected to be passionate and personal, with statistics indicating nearly half of Ohio's private workers don't receive the minimum that the Ohio Healthy Families Act would provide.
It might also be enough to drive a few extra voters to the polls in November — the same time the presidential election is decided.
And if those extra voters tend to be blue-collar Democrats, that could benefit presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Motivation for issue
John Green, director of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, said he doubts the sick-leave issue could have been contrived to affect the presidential election.
''There's too much work involved in putting something on the ballot to do it for that purpose,'' he said. ''Almost always in the past, the motivation for the ballot issue is the issue itself.''
But ballot issues can move people who aren't otherwise interested in politics to visit their polling place. And if they bother to go stand in line to vote for an issue, it doesn't take much of an effort to vote for other things on the ballot, Green said.
''It's a reasonable assumption that blue-collar voters are more likely to come out [for the sick-leave issue] and they are more likely to vote Democratic,'' Green said.
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com.
Maybe you've heard something about the Ohio Healthy Families Act, perhaps even signed a petition to get it on the November ballot.
Get the full article here.
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