The employment benefit of paid sick leave provides wages for missed work to employees who are absent due to temporary illness or incapacitation. World-wide, workers in some 145 countries have the right to paid leave for their own or children's illness. The US, in contrast, has no such national mandate. According to the most recent BLS data, 26% of full-time and 77% of part-time American workers in private industry lack paid sick leave. Passing laws mandating paid sick time provides opportunities for all workers to preserve personal, family and public health without losing wages, a particularly critical concern for for low-wage workers.

Effective as of September 1, 2012, the Seattle Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance requires employers with more than four employees to provide paid time off to all Seattle-based workers. Seattle thus joined a handful of other jurisdictions with paid leave requirements, notably San Francisco (whose requirement took effect in 2007), Washington DC (2009) and Connecticut (2012), followed rapidly by Portland, New York City, and Jersey City (NJ). This paper is based on a larger study evaluating the Ordinance’s implementation through the perspectives of both employers and employees. I draw on data from baseline and follow-up surveys of a random sample of Seattle employers along with two waves of interviews with 57 Seattle workers and employers in the accommodation and food service, retail, and health and social service industries in the 18 months after the Ordinance went into effect. 

Analysis focuses on understanding the accessibility of the newly implemented law to workers. While most eligible Seattle employers now offer at least some paid sick leave - including a striking increase in the food and accommodation sector, from 14%pre-Ordinance to 78% of employers after, just 77% of employers provide the full amount of paid leave mandated; many employers not meeting this standard nonetheless believe they are in compliance with the Ordinance. Part-time and  temporary workers, eligible for paid sick time, appear most at risk for not receiving it. Large employers (with 250+ FTE) are also less likely to provide enough paid sick time to their workers.

Employee interview data suggest several further barriers to workers' access. Over half of workers interviewed were completely unaware of the Ordinance or had only limited awareness prior to being interviewed. Many reported not having access to paid leave, despite the mandate that their employers provide it.  When workers were aware of the mandated benefit, they described it as only one of several factors they took into account in contemplating taking work leave for illness, others of which included their employers' attitudes about taking time off, financial repercussions of missing work (particularly for tipped employees who would be paid just minimum wage per hour during sick days), and their own work ethics.

The policy contributions of the paper are the identification of limits to the full impact of the new law, and presentation of several strategies for enhancing access to paid sick days for workers.