State legislators often debate bills while standing.

Perhaps, if state Sen. Rachel May is successful in passing the “Standing Is Tiring (Sit) Act” through the legislature next year, she will be able to debate bills from the comfort of her chair.

May, a Syracuse-area Democrat, introduced S.7519 recently to amend the state Labor Law by adding a new section requiring employers to provide seats to all employees whose job reasonably allows seated work. Employers would also be prohibited from designing workplaces to require standing when it isn’t necessary. The state Labor Department, meanwhile, would be required to come up with standards to determine whether a job reasonably permits sitting. Finally, May’s bill would allow employers who fail to meet the requirements to be taken to court.

“Employees in many settings, especially retail and food service, are required to stand for their entire shift. Employers often assert that this is necessary for reasons associated with professionalism, efficiency, and business needs. It is often necessary to stand while performing work, but it also true that prolonged standing with minimal or no breaks is not a necessity in many workplaces,” May wrote in her legislative justification.

May cites an OSHA review that found prolonged standing at work can lead to lower back pain, fatigue, muscle pain, tiredness and body soreness and could lead to cardiovascular problems and other health problems.

“There are many changes that employers can make to allow employees more options besides simply standing for hours on end during their shifts; the simplest of these is to provide employees who are reasonably able to perform their work sitting the option to do so. This legislation presents a reasonable step in this direction: requiring employers to provide employees who can sit with the ability to do so and preventing employers from constructing workplaces to force prolonged standing unnecessarily. This simple change to New York’s labor laws will provide relief and increase productivity for many of our hardest working neighbors,” May wrote.

The California Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that employers cannot refuse a worker a place to sit simply because they prefer an employee stand while also holding that employers must take into consideration the employeee’s work station, not just the worker’s overall duties, when deciding whether or not to provide a seat.

The opinion stemmed from a class-action lawsuit brought by cashiers at CVS drugstores and tellers at JP Morgan Chase Bank who suffered workplace injuries due to prolonged standing.

“There is no principled reason for denying an employee a seat when he spends a substantial part of his workday at a single location performing tasks that could reasonably be done while seated, merely because his job duties include other tasks that must be done standing,” Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote for the court.