San Fran. Domestic workers also qualify for sick leave

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

San Francisco's new law requiring all employers to provide paid sick leave -- the first such law in the country -- has sparked hot debate among owners of conventional small businesses such as restaurants and retail shops.

But the law also applies to another group of employers who are hardly aware of it -- people who hire household help such as nannies, babysitters, house cleaners and elder care workers.

"Many people who employ household workers don't consider themselves employers," said Andrea Lee of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a Bay Area Latina group that includes a large number of domestic workers. "One of the huge challenges of paid sick days is letting them know this law applies to them."

There are no reliable numbers for how many San Franciscans employ household help, partly because many people hire their nannies or cleaners off the books and don't file payroll tax forms for them.

The Internal Revenue Service says that nationally, about 240,000 people paid household employment taxes in 2003, the most recent year for which information is available.

But data from other sources such as the U.S. census indicate that domestic workers number as many as 1.5 million, according to Kathleen Webb, president of HomeWork Solutions, a Virginia company that provides payroll services to families around the country with domestic help.

If those figures are accurate, it would mean that as many as 5 out of 6 household workers are paid off the books -- the kind of legal transgression that cost lawyer Zoe Baird her nomination for U.S. attorney general in 1993.

People hire domestic help off the books for a variety of reasons. Many don't want to deal with the paperwork of withholding payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. Others don't realize that hiring a two-afternoon-per-week sitter has turned them into an employer in the eyes of the law.

We can safely predict,San Francisco will lose population between 2000 and 2010.