States consider mandatory paid sick days
June 11, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Benefits Law, Best Practices, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Even though most companies offer paid sick time anyway, will HR face new problems if this becomes the law?
Last year, San Fransisco passed an ordinance requiring all employers in the city to offer paid sick leave. No other governments have followed suit, but plenty are trying. The Connecticut Legislature recently debated a paid sick day bill, and a group in Ohio is trying to get a similar measure on the ballot in November.
On the federal level, the Healthy Families Act has been kicked around Congress for a while without being passed.
It’s rare to see an employer that doesn’t offer paid sick days. But that doesn’t mean these bills won’t cause problems if they’re passed. For example:
- PTO conflicts — Employers would no longer be able to offer leave in a singular paid time off (PTO) bank, since they’d have to track sick time separately. Or, they’d have to offer the mandated sick days on top of the existing PTO bank.
- Tracking issues — The bills each have a unique system for figuring out how much time people get (in Connecticut, it’d be one hour of leave for every 40 hours worked). Employers with different accrual methods would have to change.
- Part-timers — Some of the bills cover all employees — including temps and part-timers. Forced leave for those employees would burden a lot of small companies.
Hopefully, the problems will be corrected before the proposals are passed. We’ll keep you posted as the legislatures battle it out.
Tags: paid leave, part-timers, sick days, state laws
June 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
BEING THAT I INHERITED THE HR WHEN THE LAST PERSON LEFT, IT HAS BEEN GREAT READING
THESE ARETICLES. THEY HAVE HELPED ME STAY ABREAST OF WHATS GOING ON AND WHAT I CAN EXPECT EVEN WITH A SMALL GROUP OF 45 MEMBERS
TAHNKS
June 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Interesting. I’m looking into converting current sick/vacation pay into PTO. Has anyone had trouble with this, or not recommend it?
Thank you.
June 18th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
The lead sentence in this article says, “Even though most companies offer paid sick time anyway…” That’s not true in the restaurant industry. I’ve never heard of a restaurant company offering paid sick time. Salaried managers are usually expected to work on scheduled days off after being out sick, since someone has to work on their day off to cover the person out sick. Hourly employees usually just lose the time they’re out sick, and the pay for it. Most restaurant companies are working on such a tight profit margin that if they were forced to offer paid sick days, many would promptly go out of business.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Our company is located in Ohio and we are dealing with the potential of having this become law. It will definitely affect the state as a whole when it comes to attracting new business and many business in Ohio will be faced with decisions – moving out of state, reducing benefits or future pay increases, just to name a few. It’s nearly impossible to advertise this to the workforce as being a negative, but one or two years down the line, I think we’ll be saying, “What were we thinking” when our state has the highest unemployment and the inability of attracting new business. Adding a benefit such as this will be detrimental to the success of our state.
July 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Last one leaving Ohio, turn out the lights. New proposed “Healthy Families Act” (misnomer, eh) mandates accrual of 7 paid sick days a year for most employers. Law includes a provision that precludes reducing time off policies in response to the new law. Vote coming in November. It has gotten so bad that some employers who are otherwise committed to Ohio operations are considering terminating all time off benefits just prior to the vote, then, once the vote is in, making changes as needed. The gods must be crazy!
July 16th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
It’s too bad that government has to get involved yet again in the affairs of private business. It has been my experience that if you offer 7 paid sick days, people will use 7 sick days…even those who wouldn’t have under other circumstances. It is a way of rewarding employees for being sick (or lying about being sick so they won’t lose their sick time). Any “Healthy Families Act” should include rewards for becoming and remaining healthy (I call it “Well Pay”) so they can come to work every day…not the other way around. Wellness programs will also help keep insurance rates down. I know there is always the risk of people coming to work sick but, in my experience, that doesn’t happen. When the responsibility for time off is placed on the employee and they are treated like adults, they tend to act like them.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It seems to me that a company like mine who several years ago changed our 80 hour vacation time and 40 hour sick leave policy to offer 120 hours of PTO covering sick leave and vacation time will have to revert to back to splits that are much harder to administer and will in fact put employees who don’t use sick leave in the position of losing 40 hours of PTO. My company is already considering changing the policy back so that they aren’t forced to add additional sick leave to the current 120 hours of PTO. This then puts most employees in the position of losing time off or falsly claiming sick leave to get the time off. Everybody loses. What a conept.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Why not pay employees for any sick days they have at the end of the year thus motivating people not to abuse sick time. This use it or lose it policy sucks.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I guess I don’t quite understand why there is such a contriversy over all of this. I agree first of all with Susan, if you pay the employees for any unused sick time at the end of the year, it does stop alot of the non-sick days taken. I previously worked at a bank that did that and let me tell you, an extra week’s worth of pay was nice at the end of the year and I would certainly think it would come in handy with the economy these days.
On the other hand, we offer CTO time (Combination Time Off). The employees are given a total amount of CTO time at the beginning of the year (accrued). This is used “as they wish”. If you need a day off because you are sick then it comes off your CTO time, if you need a personal day, vacation, ect. The employees control what time they take and how it is used. However when it’s gone, it’s gone and no pay…… end of story.