Information as of 03/19/2020 on FMLA and how it affects businesses:
USI_03192020_Update.pdf (370.6 KB)
Highlights of the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act:
-Practices with under 500 employees are required to participate; practices with under 50 employees may be exempted by the DOL when “imposition would jeopardize the viability of the business.”
-Employers who are health care providers or emergency responders may elect to exclude their employees from the EPSLA.
-You must give full-time employees up to 80 hours of paid sick leave. (Part-time employees get 2 weeks of their average time worked, i.e. someone who works 25 hours per week on average gets 50 hours.)
-Employees must be able to use this paid sick time BEFORE any other leave already provided by the employer.
-Paid leave must be permitted for either “self” or “family” reasons:
- Self: employee is subject to government quarantine or isolation order, or advised to quarantine by a health care provider, or has symptoms of COVID-19 and is seeking medical diagnosis;
- Family: employee must care for someone who is quarantined/isolated or for a child whose school or daycare has been closed
Self leave- usual rate of pay, capped at $511 per day
Family leave - 2/3 usual rate of pay, capped at $200 per day
Business shutdown is not a covered reason for sick leave; however, a business might shut down if all its employees are on paid sick leave.
You have to post another notice in your breakroom - the DOL is supposed to have this notice published by today (3/23/20).
Highlights of the FMLA Expansion
-Practices under 500 employees must participate; practices under 25 employees are exempt only from the duty to restore the worker to their former position immediately .
-Employers may be able to exempt their health care worker employees.
-Employees who have been employees 30+ calendar days are provided with 12 weeks of protected leave to care for a child under age 18 due to school/daycare closure.
- The first 10 days of leave are unpaid, although the employee may substitute accrued PTO or the EPSLA “family leave.”
- The remaining 10 weeks are paid at two-thirds the employee’s usual rate of pay, times the employee’s usual hours of weeks worked, not to exceed $200 per day an $10,000 in the aggregate.
For both
-Starting date: No later than April 2 (per DOL)
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Do the same stipulations apply to FMLA or just the EPSLA? (-Practices with under 500 employees are required to participate; practices with under 50 employees may be exempted by the DOL when “imposition would jeopardize the viability of the business.”
-Employers who are health care providers or emergency responders may elect to exclude their employees from the EPSLA.)
Thanks. I edited the original post to add that clarity.
In short, the FMLA requirement both:
a) Excludes employees who are “health care providers”: “An employer of an employee who is a health care provider or an emergency responder may elect to exclude such employee from the application of the provisions…”
b) Includes employers of all sizes. There is no lower limit to employer size requiring FMLA leave for employees who must care for their kids with no child care/school. Employers with less than 25 employees are exempt from the requirement to indefinitely hold open jobs for employees on leave. However, they are required to reinstate leavetakers for up to a year.
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