When Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Thomas Cooper ruled that Milwaukee's paid sick leave mandate was "invalidly enacted and unconstitutional," city businesses and the workers who rely on those businesses for their jobs breathed a sigh of relief.

By ruling this costly, job-killing mandate unconstitutional, the judge gave Milwaukee a glimmer of hope that it would be allowed to compete nationally for jobs and economic development on a level playing field.

Now the same special interests who drafted this unconstitutional mandate are pressuring city leaders to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory and appeal Judge Cooper's ruling.  It would be a huge mistake for the city to succumb to this pressure. 

The day after the sick leave mandate was passed last November, the phone calls began in my office and they kept coming for weeks. Commercial realtors with stories of deals on leases that had been immediately cancelled because the prospective tenants no longer intended to locate in the city. Small businesses announcing that they were moving outside the city to avoid the new mandate. Major companies modifying expansion plans and choosing to locate good-paying jobs elsewhere because of the costs they would incur under the new mandate and because of what this mandate said about the business climate in Milwaukee.

The special interests who now are pressuring the city to appeal Judge Cooper's decision are the same ones who allowed passion to override judgment on this issue in the first place. In their well-meaning compassion for the heart-wrenching anecdotes from a handful of workers facing difficult sick leave decisions, these interests created a costly mandate that put thousands of other workers' jobs at risk.
In their hasty enthusiasm for their cause, they bypassed the people's elected representatives and placed a poorly drafted and unconstitutional measure before Milwaukee voters. In hot pursuit of their social agenda, they sought to create a theoretical sick leave benefit at the expense of real wage-paying jobs.

The City of Milwaukee must make its decision over whether to join in the appeal of this case no later than Sept. 14. That means NOW is the critical time to let your voice be heard on this issue. Contact Mayor Tom Barrett, City Council President Willie Hines and City Attorney Grant Langley to let them know you support Judge Cooper's decision. Let them know what a powerful, positive economic message it would send if the city stayed out of this appeal.

Supporters of the sick leave mandate are conducting a full-court press attempting to force the city to join in their appeal. Your calls, letters, and e-mails to these leaders are critical to helping them resist this pressure and to come to the right answer for Milwaukee's economy.

In his 1932 classic, "The Revolt of the Masses," Spanish liberal philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote, "In disturbances caused by the scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries." The sick leave mandate proponents' frenetic push for an ordinance that places Milwaukee workers' jobs at risk in the name of compassion for workers carries ironic echoes of Ortega y Gasset's warning.

It is a warning our elected leaders will be wise not to forget. Just as you cannot provide bread by wrecking bakeries, you will not grow new business in Milwaukee by increasing local labor costs. You do not help the workers by driving away their jobs. And you cannot inspire economic confidence by creating an atmosphere of legal uncertainty.

By opposing efforts to appeal Judge Cooper's ruling on the sick leave mandate, Milwaukee leaders can stand up for Milwaukee workers and send a strong message that Milwaukee is open for business again.

 

Steve Baas is the government affairs director of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.