This article was originally published in the New York Daily News
Here we go again. As an association executive representing the city’s restaurant and nightlife industry, I recently spent another day testifying at a City Council hearing on legislation that would make operating a small business in New York City even more challenging.
With all the vacant storefronts plaguing our neighborhoods and elected officials regularly espousing the importance of small businesses, you’d think we’d be at City Hall testifying in favor of legislation reducing regulatory burdens on local shops, restaurants and nightlife establishments, and providing them with relief. Think again. This hearing focused on legislation mandating that small businesses provide employees with up to two weeks paid vacation. This is in addition to the one week of paid leave employers are already required to provide, and the recently enacted paid family leave available to workers in New York.
Most medium and large businesses already offer paid vacation to their employees. So, this mandate will target small businesses that may be unable to afford giving three weeks paid time off to all employees, and who will also have trouble finding and paying other workers to cover these shifts.
This proposal will pose particular staffing challenges for restaurants, bars and clubs because they’re at their busiest during nights, weekends and holidays, precisely the times when many workers will demand their paid vacation. The proposal will also interfere with the paid time-off policies many businesses already offer and create more red tape to comply with the complicated record keeping requirements set by lawmakers.
As the mayor and City Council have increased their operating budget and payroll annually, funded significantly by taxes that businesses pay, local entrepreneurs have been shuttering stores, cutting workers’ hours and eliminating jobs. Last year, the city’s restaurant industry shed about 6,000 jobs and the troubling decline in jobs has continued in 2019. Now is clearly not the time for another expensive employer mandate.
The de Blasio administration did establish a hospitality industry partnership intended to work with and support the restaurant industry. However, to the consternation of many in the industry, it’s resulted in zero regulatory reforms. So, I ask those in government who care about entrepreneurship and local businesses to stand up and amplify their voices and actions to support their local businesses.
They should understand the importance of employee benefits but also understand the necessity of a healthy balance sheet for restaurants to sustain jobs and keep their doors open. These expensive employer mandates put tremendous financial pressure on small businesses and exacerbate New York City’s affordability crisis. This is because in response, restaurants and bars increase the price of food and drinks to cover their increased expenses. But lawmakers rarely take responsibility for the polices that result in the higher consumer prices that hit resident New Yorkers and visitors in the wallet.
Mandating an additional two weeks paid time off sounds great, but during a time when the restaurant industry is under a constant barrage of new mandates, with no meaningful financial offsets given, proposals like this put small business owners in an impossible position. Their margins are too small to absorb the increase costs and their customers are too price sensitive for them to raise prices in response to each new mandate.
Those familiar with New York government know that espousing the virtues of small business is good politics, but unfortunately it rarely results in good policy for the businesses. New York City needs to take a vacation from implementing burdensome policies and should get to work passing polices that help businesses succeed and create good jobs.
