SBAM is advocating for changes to the Earned Sick Time Act that will lessen the harm for small businesses. Click HERE for more information.
Business organizations and chambers of commerce across Michigan are asking Lansing lawmakers to make changes to the 72-hour Paid Sick Leave Act to correct issues before the act is implemented.
Senior Vice President of Business Advocacy Michigan Chamber Wendy Block said there were five changes that were important to the business community. As each session day ticked by there was one fewer day for the Legislature to ensure the policies work for employers.
“We need lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to come together and to find common-sense solutions to make sure that implementation works,” Block said.
The first item she discussed was carving out an exemption for any employer that meets or exceeds the 72-hour threshold, so businesses wouldn’t be required to follow the notification and documentation of time that can be used under the law.
She said the law would force employers to separate out 72 hours to put in a sick time category, which would take away their flexibility in determining how to use paid time off.
“There’s really no reason for those employers who have great policies in place today to have to make wholesale changes,” Block said.
The second exemption she posited was for seasonal employees, temporary employees and independent contractors.
Block said there is no clarity to the language in the statute that was re-implemented by the Michigan Supreme Court. She didn’t see those employees making enough time to actually use it.
The businesses would like to see the “as soon as practicable” clarified in statute, because Block said as it reads now it would give carte blanche to employees to use all 72 hours for a “no-call, no-show” and argue they couldn’t call in.
“No other state has a no-notice ghosting provision in their laws, and we really think that needs to be rethought,” she said.
The fourth thing they wanted to remove was the litigation part of the act, specifically the provision that allows employees to sue businesses if there was retaliation or discipline for the employee using their sick time.
Block said it would end up being a “litigation nightmare.”
The last was to clarify that the employers would have the ability to frontload the 72 hours of sick time at the start of the year, instead of just allowing it to accrue over the number of hours worked.
“This is problematic because a lot of employers say, ‘Hey, here’s your time upfront. You can use it as you see fit,” Block said.
The Department of Labor and Economics recently released a frequently asked questions page of their interpretation of the act, and said the front-loading of sick time was already something that would be possible under the law.
Block said there were too many ambiguities in the language, and that the reason for their asking about the changes has to do with clarification in many points.
“LEO’s FAQs are not going to do people a lot of good in court,” she said.
Those courts could end up being the arbiters of interpretation of the laws, which are in themselves subject to different interpretations by a different court.
Business Leaders for Michigan Vice President of Government Affairs Lindsay Case Palsrok said they were grateful for LEO’s guidance, but that guidance itself should point to the need for legislative fixes they are asking to enact.
“Some of LEO’s guidance or FAQs highlight the fact that this is an extremely practical set of problems, and we are offering a very practical set of solutions. They’re not political, and they’re certainly not ideological,” Case Palsrok said.
Michigan Manufacturers Association Director of Employment Policy David Worthams said business is looking for a sense of stability, because the interpretations could end up changing along with the administration and Legislature.
“Putting these changes, these clarifications, into statute provides the permanency that businesses need,” Worthams said.
Aisha Wells, a co-deputy director of organizing for Mothering Justice, the organization that brought the case to the Michigan Supreme Court, said employers and employees need each other.
She couldn’t understand the need for clarity on the “as soon as practicable” provision and said there was no interpretation that would allow for someone to miss three days in a row without calling work to say they weren’t coming in.
Wells said that was a “made-up” scenario, but understood that it could happen that someone doesn’t call in by the start of their shift because of an emergency.
“If my son is in an ambulance, I probably don’t have the opportunity to call and tell somebody that my son is in an ambulance,” she said.
She said prioritizing the health of employees and their family was the point of the law, and the last thing someone wants to think about after calling 911 is calling their employer to say they aren’t coming in.
She said the idea that this would exacerbate an already short-staffed workforce was overblown, and pointed to her and two other employees of Mothering Justice who had babies at the same time.
“We are here and surviving and thriving, and the workplace did well. It can work,” she said.
She did concede that there could be people who would take advantage of the 72-hours paid sick time, but most employees would not be trying to abuse the system.
“We can’t account for the ‘maybe’ person who might do something they shouldn’t do, versus the single mother who needs to take time from work because her kid is sick, and she can’t take them to school,” she said.
Article courtesy MIRS News for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
Click here for more News & Resources.