Best of HRBenefits: Obama backs mandatory sick leave: What it means to you
May 25, 2009 by StaffPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter
Does your company offer employees paid sick leave or a paid time off bank? If not, you may be forced to in the near future.
The House of Representatives recently discussed a bill known as the Healthy Families Act (HFA) that would require paid sick leave as a benefit. It’s likely to come to a vote in the spring.
The act would cover any physical or mental illness, injury, or medical condition. The leave would be legally protected — meaning employees could sue if the company discriminated against people who take time off.
In its current form, HFA would make it mandatory for all employers with 15 or more employees to provide at least seven paid sick days a year to FTEs. Part-time employees would get a prorated amount based on the number of hours they work.
HFA would not apply only to employees’ illnesses. Much like FMLA, it would also allow employees to tend to a sick family member.
As currently written, HFA defines “family member” to include any blood relative or anyone whose relationship with the employee is “the equivalent of a family relationship” (e.g., a domestic partner).
What if you already offer paid sick time?
If HFA passes, many employers won’t need to make any changes to their sick-time policies. That’s assuming the company already gives its employees paid sick leave at least equivalent to the HFA seven-day minimum.
It’s unknown at present what the passage of the bill would mean for companies with PTO banks. This will have to be clarified in the final version of the bill. It’s possible that employers would be required to add seven provisional days to the existing bank to be used exclusively for sicknesses.
The bill would prohibit companies from reducing existing paid vacation or PTO time to offset the costs of complying with the mandatory sick days.
Fierce lobbying is expected on both sides of the bill, and passage is far from a certainty.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Being required to create a pool of separate hours for sick leave defeats the purpose of a PTO pool of hours. If a company currently offers a PTO pool with more than 7 days per year, and is required to establish as separate pool for sick leave only, the company should not be prohibited from restructuring its benefit back into two separate pools for vacation and sick leave.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I voted for Obama because I thought he was a big-picture visionary. But it’s not ‘big picture’ to micromanage and to mandate one-size-fits-all approaches.
Obviously I am in favor of paid sick leave to take care of family health issues, and of course my company already provides sick leave to our employees; we just don’t do it exactly as HFA proposes. In some ways we are more generous with leave, and in others, less. But will we get credit for the ways in which we are more generous? I don’t think so. We will simply have to increase benefits in other areas, which will constitute an unfunded mandate since we are a nonprofit relying on State reimbursement for services. Very frustrating.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Companies who practice an all inclusive PTO have been considered progressive allowing employees to customize time off according to their personal needs. It’s obvious to me that we do not have true HR Experts writing and formulating this legislative policy or this would not be an issue for those employees who employ progressive policies already.
Dear President Obama, this is disappointing! Let the experts manage time off for their organizations and compete in the open market the way intended.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I’m sure it’s not definitive yet because all these new things change on a daily basis (groan), but here’s my question:
At our company, everyone gets 6 personal days each year to be used however they wish, unused days do not rollover into following. Then we get a minimum of 2 weeks vacation and up depending on years of service. We outline these in our policy separately, it’s not a PTO bank. We’re pretty generous because we also have a summer hours program and a good holiday time off allowance including the office being closed between Xmas thru NY.
If this new law passes does this mean we need to have specifically designated sick days in addition to our current program or have to modify it, or are we covered under our current time off program?
A side question: We’ve always been closed on Good Friday and we think we’re pretty generous with holiday time off during the year. A question has come up if we need to also be closed on Martin Luther King day? If we do, does that open a can of worms for other religious holidays because we also have several Jewish people? Do we offer an additional floating holiday? What are you experiencing with this?
Thanks!