More than 350,000 San Antonio workers are a step closer to earning paid sick leave from their employers.

The city clerk’s office has verified that proponents of mandatory sick leave have gathered more than enough valid signatures to compel the City Council to adopt an ordinance or put the proposal to public initiative, several sources with knowledge of the matter said.

If the ordinance ultimately is enacted — either by a vote of the City Council or by a vote of the public — the policy would require that virtually all employees working in San Antonio’s private sector earn paid sick leave.

The ordinance would cover anyone working in the private sector within San Antonio — even if they’re employed by a company outside of San Antonio, said Alex Birnel, the advocacy manager at MOVE Texas, one of the groups pushing for mandatory paid sick leave.

San Antonio-based companies would not be required to offer the same benefits to employees not working in the city.

Working Texans for Paid Sick Time — an alliance of grass-roots, community and labor groups that include the Texas Organizing Project, MOVE Texas, and labor unions Unite Here and the San Antonio AFL-CIO — submitted some 144,000 signatures on May 24 with the intent of placing the ordinance on the November ballot.

“Certainly, I’m not surprised because we collected more than 144,000 signatures, and we were confident going in that we had more than enough to certify,” said Michelle Tremillo, executive director of TOP San Antonio.

Government employers aren’t affected by the proposed ordinance because they cannot be regulated by local policies. The law also wouldn’t apply to unpaid interns or independent contractors working here.

But any business, both for- and not-for-profit with employees, no matter how few, would be required to comply. It would take effect for businesses with more than five employees on Aug. 1, 2019. Those “micro-businesses” with five or fewer employees would fall under the regulation beginning Aug. 1, 2021.

The ordinance would require that employees earn an hour of sick leave for every 30 hours of work and could accrue a minimum of 48 hours for businesses with 15 or fewer employees and 60 hours for businesses with more than 15 employees.

Louis Barrios, a local restaurateur and board member of both the San Antonio Restaurant Association and the San Antonio Area Tourism Council, said the ordinance would be devastating to business owners, particularly those in the restaurant industry.

The additional cost of providing the benefits would be passed on to consumers, said Barrios, who worried that San Antonians wouldn’t be able to afford the increased cost. He lamented a recent meal in Austin, where a sick-leave ordinance was approved earlier in the year. It’s scheduled to go into effect Oct. 1.

Barrios said he took his wife out for a meal in downtown Austin, where they paid $40 for a burger and fries, a rice plate and a mimosa. (Barrios said he kept the receipt in his wallet from the May meal because of what’s in the works for San Antonio.)

“The consumer cannot afford to pay this much money for a meal,” he said. “So you can keep doing these pro-labor laws, and what it’s going to do is it’s going to price a lot of restauranteurs out of the marketplace.”

Restaurateurs, he said, would be forced to change their business model from leisure dining to counter service, which requires fewer employees, or fold altogether.

“It’s one thing if San Francisco, Seattle and Austin do these (paid sick-leave ordinances),” he said. “It will devastate us. It will change. People will start changing biz models, and people will stop employing 16-to-24-year-olds.”

City officials would not confirm that City Clerk Leticia Vacek had verified at least the requisite 69,950 signatures, which is 10 percent of the registered voters during the city’s last election.

City Attorney Andrew Segovia has clamped down on the details of the clerk’s conclusion and is pointing to a process in the City Charter that calls for a presentation to be made to the council at a regularly scheduled meeting.

In this case, that’s Aug. 2.

It’s unclear exactly what may happen besides Vacek’s certification. According to city officials, the ordinance also would require a public hearing, and ultimately a decision by the council on how to proceed.

Council members have 60 days from the clerk’s certification to decide on whether to pass the ordinance themselves or to send it to a ballot. And because that time period expires well after Aug. 20 — the state deadline for calling a November election — the council could effectively punt the issue until the May 2019 municipal election.

There doesn’t appear to be much appetite for delaying the matter until next year.

“The council will not intentionally delay a decision,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said in a statement to the San Antonio Express-News. “It is important that council members hear from stakeholders. This a major ordinance with major implications.”

His chief political foe on the dais, Councilman Greg Brockhouse, called for the ordinance to be sent to voters in November.

“Every citizen has the right to petition their government. I will always support that right,” he said. “This should go to a public vote. The implications affect hundreds of thousands of residents and our business community. It deserves a fair debate, that discusses the pros and cons, and includes all stakeholders. I am comfortable knowing the public will make the decision, not City Hall.”

Indeed, the ordinance would have wide-ranging impact.

According to a study conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, some 354,000 San Antonio workers, about 39 percent of the local workforce, do not have paid sick time. The national average is 36 percent.

Tremillo said the Texas Organizing Project would work throughout the summer, pushing council members to call a November election, though an ordinance passed by the council still would be a victory. Her organization conducts voter outreach and targets unlikely voters, among others.

“One of the goals of our organization is to increase the number of people voting in San Antonio and across the state,” she said. “We work to ensure that the electorate is reflective of the majority of us who live here. So it’s very important that people have a reason to vote.”

Organizers spend a lot of time speaking with disengaged voters and infrequent voters, she said. And issues like paid sick leave give them a reason to go to the polls.

Clearly, the petition, if it goes to the ballot, would be a useful tool for progressive organizations to rally behind a successful get-out-the-vote campaign.

Councilman Rey Saldaña, a strong proponent of the measure, said that many people “incredibly underestimated” the ability of TOP and its allies.

“There are over 350,000 San Antonio workers that lack earned paid sick time, and in a city built on the back of the service industry, it’s a personal struggle that you or someone who serves you understands,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me that there was an overwhelming number of signatures verified to put this question to the voters in November.”

Josh Baugh is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | jbaugh@express-news.net | Twitter: @jbaugh