OK, I'm convinced McKenna is running for governor, this is just another step. But where is he getting this moxy? Is he expecting the smart-rich-white-man/dumb-poor-white-man vote to rocket him to victory?

I love it when people consider offering paid sick leave a REVOLUTIONARY idea. Thanks to the town halls from 2009, health care is still not in the national interest.. People mock the FLOTUS for pointing out that hey, maybe we're all a little too fat if we're having to design new sports stadiums with wider seating. Here they scream for privatized liquor because the right to drink ourselves to death is more important than the basic right to life. What QUALITY of life do we want for ourselves?.

Republicans want poor people to have shitty access to health care and then work themselves ragged until they are forced to die in an emergency room because "You weren't going to vote for us anyway, you have no money to donate to our campaigns, you've no underage Thai girls to fellate our penises/diddle our Skittles, so why should we give a flying fuck about you?"

HOW are people buying into this bullshit?

What do Republicans expect people to do when they get sick? Would the Attorney General be willing to take unpaid sick days to help our budget woes? We are literally watching the country move backwards.

They appear to be counting on the Fox-news-watching, not-big-on-thinking-for-themselves crowd to swallow their crap hook, line, and sinker the way that they always have. Honestly, if you can believe God made the world 6000 years ago over the course of 7 days and that Jesus loves everyone except the muslims and gays (and historically blacks, jews, etc.), then it isn't exactly a stretch to believe that Republicans have your best interests at heart and that sick people are only sick because we allow gay people to exist.

How many sick days has McKenna taken as a public employee? Anyone able to find out?

Let's just start calling him a Scott Walker Republican and use that as a preface for everything "Just today Scott Walker republican McKenna said he'd..."

The stupidest thing about all that is that businesses in the restaurant & entertainment industries will benefit the most from universal paid sick leave!

Right now, when a part time worker gets sick and can't work, they loose wages for the days they miss. That short term reduction in income impacts their spending -- but the impact isn't realized equally across all types of spending.

The worker who's minus a couple day's pay can't pay less in rent for the month, or for utilities, or transportation, or any of the other numerous fixed costs in their family's budget. Instead, those lost wages come out of spending in the very industries that are bitching the most about this legislation: dining out & entertainment!

When random Jane Part-Time-Worker-Mom has to stay home cuz her daughter has a 103 degree fever -- and she can't use sick leave to compensate for her lost hours -- it means she's can't afford go out for dinner that extra time the following week. Or go to a movie or out to a club on Saturday night. She won't be buying that extra latte or indulging herself in that overpriced cupcake or locally-sourced specialty ice cream cone.

The manufacturing, construction, industrial, engineering, software, office, etc sectors of the local economy don't suffer a wit when the part-time worker misses a day's pay. But the restaurant/entertainment sector takes it in the ass every. single. time!

So for the price of a few days sick pay a year for their dozen or so employees, the restaurant owners get a whole fucking city full of part time workers with money to spend at their businesses during the otherwise slow winter, cold & flu season here in Seattle. You'd think it would be a no brainer!

I guess someone really needs to teach these short-sighted idiots how to think in their own enlightened self interest for a change!

Why is a paid sick leave law pro-worker?

Look, an employer cares how much he pays for the labor he gets. If he pays $X total, he doesn't care if that's $X in wages and $0 in paid sick leave, or $(X-Y) in wages and $Y in paid sick leave. If a business's workers would prefer to get $Y of their compensation in the form of paid sick leave, they probably already do, since the employer doesn't care how his $X get spent. Mandating $Y of paid sick leave just changes the mix; it doesn't give workers an overall pay raise to $(X+Y).

A paid sick leave law may benefit public health by encouraging potentially infectious workers to stay home. It may benefit the less healthy workers who use sick leave, at the expense of the more healthy workers who don't. But there is no reason to think that it raises the overall benefit level of workers as a whole.

@David:

If a business's workers would prefer to get $Y of their compensation in the form of paid sick leave, they probably already do...

1) You assume part-time workers have a say in the ratios of their compensation (pay vs. benefits, X vs. Y) at their place of employment. WA is a "right to work" state. There is absolutely no evidence to support such a bold assumption on your part.

2) X has a low-end limit of the minimum wage, so for those at the bottom end of the pay scale, as many part-time workers are, for every single one of them: (X+Y) > X

Timrrr@7:

1. WA is not a right-to-work state. But it doesn't actually matter one way or ther other, because workers are free to tell their employer that they would prefer an alternative mix of compensation regardless of whether they are in a right-to-work state or not. And if the cost to the employer is truely the same, why wouldn't the employer agree? If you can make your employees happier, and you get the same work for the same cost, that's a win.

2. Yes, minimum wage laws do impose a lower bound on X-Y. One possible employer response to that would be to increase total compensation so as to meet both the minimum wage and minimum paid sick leave mandates. Of course, another possible response is to conclude that employing this person is no longer profitable.

We can't forget that is businesses (large and small) will just pass on the added cost to us, the consumer. So I might get 9 of paid sick days a year, but I will be paying more every time I go out for dinner, drinks or get groceries.

When it comes right down to it, we will have to be paying our own sick days-