Lawmakers Can Fix Paid Sick Leave Law

04.25.2014
Issues & Policies

Connecticut employers are seeking simple, commonsense changes that would provide some needed clarity and flexibility in the way the state’s paid sick leave law is administered. 

Lawmakers should adopt HB 5269 because it would:

  • Give employers the flexibility to administer the law in a 365-day period other than a calendar year. (For example, many employers use a fiscal year for record-keeping.) This will allow businesses to more efficiently track paid sick leave simultaneously with other employee benefits.
  • Make the reporting of paid sick leave and FMLA consistent.  The paid sick leave law requires businesses to report their number of employees over a three-month period. With such a long time frame, employers that never have more than 49 employees at any given time must include employees who left their positions and were replaced within the same three-month period. Thus, employers that were not supposed to fall under the law could inadvertently appear to have 50 employees, and would fall subject to the law.

A simple change can avoid that mixup: Allow employee reporting under paid sick leave to be handled as it is under FMLA, which requires employers to simply report their employee count on October 1 each year. This annual reporting method is a time-tested and accepted practice, and for uniformity’s sake should be applied to paid sick leave.

  • Correct an error that imposes the paid sick leave law on some manufacturers with multiple locations rather than excluding all manufacturers as intended. Though the law clearly exempts manufacturers, a technical error in the bill arguably subjects some manufacturers—those with multiple facilities on different properties–subject to the mandate.  However, the legislature never intended the law to apply to some manufacturers and not others. 

With only a days remaining in the legislative session, now is the time for our legislators to take corrective action on the paid sick leave law. 

For more information, contact CBIA’s Eric Gjede at 860.244.1931 | eric.gjede@cbia.com | @egjede

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