Our colleagues , at Epstein Becker Green, have a post on the Retail Labor and Employment Law blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the health care industry: “Proposed Federal Bill Would Pre-Empt State and Local Paid Sick Leave Laws.”
Following is an excerpt:
On November 2, 2017, three Republican Representatives, Mimi Walters (R-CA), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), introduced a federal paid leave bill that would give employers the option of providing their employees a minimum number of paid leave hours per year and instituting a flexible workplace arrangement. The bill would amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) and use the statute’s existing pre-emption mechanism to offer employers a safe harbor from the hodgepodge of state and local paid sick leave laws. Currently eight states and more than 30 local jurisdictions have passed paid sick leave laws.
The minimum amount of paid leave employers would be required to provide depends on the employer’s size and employee’s tenure. The bill does not address whether an employer’s size is determined by its entire workforce or the number of employees in a given location. ...