Seattle Media Credulously Regurgitate Industry-Funded "Report" on Paid Sick Leave

[eridani]

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/08/20/seattle-media-credulously-regurgitate-industry-funded-report-on-paid-sick-leave

Berman is a human turd. "An exploiter." "A union buster." "A scoundrel." "A world historical mother******* son of a bitch." And those are just the words of his own son.

To be clear, there is nothing nonprofit about what Berman does. He raises millions of dollars for front groups like EPI, which then turn around and hire his for-profit communications firm Berman and Company (with which EPI shares office space). Sweet! EPI is in turn largely funded by the restaurant and retail industry, which explains its primary mission of opposing the minimum wage.

As for the "report" itself, it's totally unscientific and statistically insignificant bullshit. It's merely the compiled responses from a self-reported nine-question multiple-choice survey, administered to 301 Seattle "service industry businesses" (you know, restaurants), of which only the 191 employers who said that they started providing sick leave benefits due to the new ordinance are included in the results. So yeah, if EPI can be trusted, about 56 percent of the 191 employers surveyed said that Seattle's paid sick leave ordinance would increase their cost of doing business. But they weren't asked to prove it.

So essentially the evidence that paid sick leave is bad for businesses and employees is that business owners opposed to providing paid sick leave say that it is bad for businesses and employees. That's some report!