Sick-days compromise in trouble

A coalition including labor groups and community organizations wants Ohio voters to decide the issue.

COLUMBUS (AP) — An effort by Gov. Ted Strickland to broker a compromise on a proposal to mandate paid sick days for many Ohio workers is on life support, heading toward a contentious fight over a ballot issue.

The influential Ohio Business Roundtable, which includes leaders of the state’s largest corporations, has described the compromise efforts as hopeless. Gov. Ted Strickland is continuing to try to reach an agreement over the weekend with the hopes of success by early next week, said spokesman Keith Dailey.

A coalition of labor groups, including the Service Employees International Union, and community organizations is pushing for the adoption of mandated sick days for Ohio workers on the Nov. 4 ballot. The proposal would require businesses with 25 or more employees to provide full-time workers at least seven paid sick days each year.

Strickland, a Democrat, is concerned about the policy’s impact on Ohio’s already challenging business climate, and Republican legislative leaders and business leaders have called it a job killer. Strickland has been trying to hammer out a compromise agreeable to both sides instead of leaving the policy to the ballot.

A compromise would likely include a smaller number of mandated sick days and would only apply to businesses that have a bigger work force than the proposal’s threshold of 25.

Time is quickly running out. Leaders have until Sept. 5 — the last day a ballot issue can be pulled off the ballot — to reach a compromise.

But if a deal were reached, lawmakers would have to be summoned back from a summer recess full of campaigning to put the agreement into law. Without the backing of groups such as the Ohio Business Roundtable, Republican legislative leaders may be unwilling to go forth with a compromise.

“On the ’big’ issues, SEIU was unwilling to move anywhere close to our position,” Richard Stoff, president of the Roundtable, wrote in a memo sent late Thursday to members of the organization. “We will now be turning our attention to opposing the ballot issue this fall.”

Dale Butland, a spokesman for Ohioans for Healthy Families, the coalition behind the sick-days initiative, said the governor had asked those involved in the talks not to discuss them publicly.

Other business groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business/Ohio, have already declined to participate in compromise efforts because they feel that any government mandated sick days policy is an unwarranted intrusion on business.

Ohioans for Healthy Families is waiting for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to verify signatures it submitted to place the sick-day issue on the ballot.