NEW YORK (AP) — A debate over whether New York City should make a pioneering move to require paid vacation has both sides saying: Give me a break.
JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — A debate over whether New York City should make a pioneering move to require paid vacation has both sides saying: Give me a break.
Mayor Bill de Blasio wants New York to become the first place in the 50 states to make private businesses provide time off with pay. He casts the idea, which is awaiting City Council action, as a next frontier in workers’ rights.
His plan resonates with people like Barbara Vasquez, a former Manhattan retail worker who says she struggled with health problems that exhausted any sick leave she accrued as a part-timer.
The 25-year-old likes working and needed the money, but she said she quit after a little over a year to nurture her health.
“Paid vacations would have helped,” said Vasquez. “I actually think I would have been a much better employee because I wouldn’t have been so burned out.”
But some city-based small business owners say paid vacation would pile on pressures after minimum wage increases and a paid sick leave requirement in recent years. Under the Democratic mayor’s proposal, most businesses would have to give full-time workers at least 10 paid vacation days a year, pro-rated for part-timers, besides sick time.
“I would love to be able to provide vacation time to my employees… but the reality of it is not whether or not we want to give it — it’s whether we can give it,” says Dawn Casale, the founder of One Girl Cookies, a Brooklyn bakery with three retail shops and about 40 employees. They get paid time off after five years, or if they’re managers; others can arrange unpaid vacation, she said.
