By Lori Welty, Compliance Attorney
The trend for mandatory paid sick leave continues to be a leading development in leave law. Last year, we told you about the battle playing out over the right of a municipality to enact its own leave laws, versus the right of a state to preempt and regulate the field of leave law. Just last month, we highlighted the President’s mission to make paid sick leave a priority in the current legislative session. While paid sick leave remains an active topic in the state legislatures, with programs in California and Massachusetts going live in 2015, municipalities remain the more fertile ground for this legislation. 2014 saw paid sick leave programs go into effect in New York City, Portland, OR and the New Jersey cities of Jersey City, Passaic, and Newark. Already, a bevy of additional cities have paid sick leave programs launching in 2015 -Oakland, CA, Eugene, OR, and the New Jersey cities of Trenton, Montclair, East Orange, Irvington, and Paterson. A couple of additional cities have already enacted laws that go into effect in 2016 – San Diego and Tacoma, WA.
Last Thursday on February 12, 2015, after 2 vetoes in 2011 and 2013, Philadelphia became the next city to join the growing list. Mayor Nutter signed into law a paid sick leave bill that applies to businesses with at least 10 employees. It will allow employees to accrue an hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked and it goes into effect in 90 days.
With 94 paid sick leave laws proposed in the last federal and state legislature sessions and 29 already proposed in just January 2015 alone, this issue is poised to pick up steam. Continue to follow Reed Group’s blog for the latest in paid sick leave and leave of absence industry news.