Over the past several years many states and cities have enacted legislation requiring employers to offer paid sick leave to their employees. This trend is continuing in 2018, with Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Washington adding state-wide paid sick leave laws. Austin, Texas and Duluth, Minnesota also both recently passed paid sick leave laws.
The paid sick leave trend is gaining momentum across the U.S. because it gives employees time to take care of their own health and that of their family without fear of losing their job or going without pay. Although hotly debated in some legislatures, the trend toward requiring paid sick leave is expected to continue, due in part to the fact that there is no federal paid sick leave requirement for employers.
Paid sick leave laws have some common requirements:
Each paid sick leave law is unique, and conflicting requirements may sometimes exist where an employee is covered by more than one law (e.g., a state law and a local law). This presents a compliance challenge for employers managing their paid sick leave policies.
We expect the trend for paid sick leave requirements to continue to gain momentum in the future, and as a result, employers should consider strategies for juggling the varied and complex requirements that may apply to them.
Employers may want to consider how they will coordinate paid sick leave with other types of leave (e.g., FMLA), whether they wish to offer an all-inclusive paid time off policy or a separate paid sick leave policy, and possibly even state-specific supplements to core employee handbooks. Considering this continuing trend, employers will want to keep an eye on existing and new sick leave requirements that apply to them and review or revise their paid leave policies and procedures, if necessary.
Want to learn more about paid leave laws, and strategies to help manage their requirements? Join Kelly on Wednesday, July 25 for a special webinar, What you need to know about new paid leave laws. Register now.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this post is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon or construed as legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. You should review with your legal advisors how the laws identified in this post may apply to your specific situation.
Kelly Dougherty is Senior Compliance Counsel at Ceridian with years of employment law counseling and litigation experience. At Ceridian, Kelly enjoys tackling employment-related compliance issues in the HCM world and working to help develop cutting edge products.
View CollectionSeptember 23, 2021