People in Spokane Valley are watching the city of Spokane very closely. So are people in Idaho. Both areas stand to benefit if the Spokane City Council forces employers to pay for mandatory paid sick leave. If Spokane officials create a harsher, more restrictive business climate, it will create an incentive for jobs and businesses to migrate out of Spokane.

It’s not that the policy isn’t well-intentioned—people pushing workplace mandates always think they are being generous—it’s that workers often suffer tradeoffs, like lost benefits, cuts in hours and fewer new job opportunities whenever new regulations are imposed. Too often, we ignore these unseen effects. Too often we ignore the research. And too often we take the decision out of the hands of the very small business owners and workers who activists say they are trying to help.

In the coming weeks, the Spokane City Council will decide whether Spokane should join Seattle and just 18 other cities around the country in adopting a mandatory paid sick leave requirement.

The initial proposal from Councilman Jon Snyder and a group of unions would require all 12,000 businesses in the city to offer paid sick leave to their workers. They’re demanding the larger the company, the more time off for employees. 

That proposal even covers businesses that aren’t located in Spokane—if they have employees who “stop in Spokane as a purpose of their work.” This paperwork nightmare will force business owners outside of Spokane to re-evaluate whether doing business in the Lilac City makes economic sense any longer.

Mandatory requirements like this are rare—and for good reason. Many businesses already offer some sort of paid sick leave and time off for their employees. They don’t need a government mandate to do so.

In lieu of sick leave, many businesses offer other nonmandated benefits to their workers, such as flexible schedules, extra vacation time, health care, or even higher wages. Studies consistently show paid sick leave mandates not only increase costs, but also harm employees by reducing those other benefits.

We have a real-life example of the impact in our own backyard. Seattle recently adopted a paid sick leave policy. Once the requirement was put into place, according to a University of Washington survey, 11.7 percent of workers saw bonuses, take-home pay, or vacation time reduced. Another 8.2 percent of employers raised prices on consumers.

In another survey, 56 percent of Seattle small business owners said the new law increased their cost of doing business, and nearly 20 percent said they reduced or eliminated employee benefits as a result.

Supporters of forced paid sick leave say business owners shouldn’t panic about the mandate. They say businesses can afford to pick up the extra cost. Perhaps some could. But what about those businesses that don’t operate with a high profit margin?

How much would a paid sick leave mandate cost businesses in Spokane? There are about 12,000 businesses in the city, and about 146,000 employees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average cost to an employer for paid sick leave is 25-cents per hour, per employee. Nationally, 39 percent of private sector workers don’t receive paid sick leave. So theoretically, about 57,000 workers in Spokane would begin receiving mandated leave. Assuming those workers clock the national average of hours per year (1,700), the cost to employers in Spokane for mandatory paid sick leave would be a staggering $24.3 million – every year.

It won’t be the Spokane City Council that has to pay that extra cost. It will be the 90 percent of Spokane’s businesses that have fewer than 20 employees. It will be the Spokane workers who no longer get extra vacation time or the pay raise they were seeking.

Forcing paid sick leave seems like a nice thing to do for workers, but most employers cannot simply absorb the increased costs from such government mandates.  

Paid sick leave bills introduced during the 2015 Washington state legislative session would have increased the cost on employers statewide by $1.5 billion per year. Those bills died during the regular session. 

Interestingly enough, even though they were supported by unions, those bills exempted employers whose workers were unionized. The one-size-fits-all solution was fine for everyone but the unions.

The Spokane paid sick leave bill also is being pushed by some area unions, but building trade union executives want to be exempt. If some unions want special treatment, doesn’t that indicate there’s something fundamentally wrong with the mandatory policy?

Chris Cargill is the Eastern Washington director for Washington Policy Center (WPC). Erin Shannon is the organization’s small business director. WPC is an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia.