In an all-out blitz, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has undertaken a number of efforts to encourage the states and private employers to support paid leave. Included in those efforts:

• President Obama’s 2016 budget includes more than $2 billion in new funds to encourage states to develop paid family and medical leave programs.
• In 2015, the DOL awarded $1 million in grants to help states and municipalities to conduct feasibility studies for paid leave programs.
• In 2014, the DOL’s Women’s Bureau awarded $500,000 in grants to three states and the District of Columbia, to investigate and develop paid leave initiatives.

In addition, in September 2015 President Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) requiring that employees performing work on covered federal contracts and subcontracts earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, accruing up to 56 hours (or 7 days) of earned paid sick leave per year.

In making the argument for paid leave for all employees, the DOL points to a statistic showing that only 12 percent of U.S. private sector workers have access to paid family leave through their employer. According to the DOL, too many workers still cannot afford to take unpaid leave because of the loss of income it entails, or have to cut their leave short because of financial or workplace pressures.

Leave abuse and what the numbers say

According to statistics provided by the DOL, workers who receive paid sick leave are not inclined to abuse the benefit. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Compensation Survey shows that workers who have access to a fixed number of paid sick days do not abuse such leave. On average, employees with access to paid sick days use only 4 days of the 8 to 9 days they have access to per year. An analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey also shows that workers use an average of 2.65 days annually for their own medical needs, their families’ needs, and for doctor’s visits.

After Connecticut enacted its earned sick time law, 86 percent of employers surveyed reported no known cases of benefit abuse, and another 6 percent reported only one to three cases of abuse in the past year. According to the DOL, only about two-thirds of workers used earned sick time, and the average was just 4 days, or about one-half of the average number of days available to them.

In a survey of Jersey City businesses, over 92 percent of employers saw no change in their employee’s use of sick time, and 4 percent even reported that their workers took fewer days. In San Francisco, where workers earned 5 or 9 sick days per year depending on employer size, the typical worker with access to time off used only 3 days, and one-quarter of workers used none.

And the results

The Obama administration’s investment in paid leave has paid off. Before 2014, there were only four paid sick leave laws in effect nationwide. That number has grown exponentially in the past 2 years to over two dozen laws and ordinances covering several states and numerous cities and counties.

At the time of the writing of this newsletter, the states with paid sick leave laws include: The District of Columbia (2008), Connecticut (2012), California (2015), Massachusetts (2015), and Oregon (2016).

The cities and counties with paid sick leave ordinances in effect or scheduled to take effect include San Francisco, CA (2007), Seattle, WA (2012), Portland, OR (2014), Jersey City, NJ (2014), New York City, NY (2014), Newark, NJ (2014), Passaic, NJ (2015), East Orange, NJ (2015), Paterson, NJ (2015), Irvington, NJ (2015), Oakland, CA (2015), Montclair, NJ (2015), Trenton, NJ (2015), Philadelphia, PA (2015), Bloomfield, NJ (2015), Emeryville, CA (2015), Los Angeles, CA (2015/2016 for larger then smaller hotels), Tacoma, WA (in July 2016), San Diego, CA (vote in June 2016), Montgomery County, MD (October 2016), Pittsburgh, PA (2016), and Elizabeth, NJ (2016).

Although proposed federal legislation has stalled in Congress, it is anticipated that the list of states and cities with paid leave laws will continue to grow.

Paid Leave Resources

For more information on paid leave, see the following paid leave resources:

DOL paid leave fact sheet: http://www.dol.gov/featured/PaidLeave/get-the-facts-sicktime.pdf

DOL policy brief on paternity leave: http://www.dol.gov/asp/policy-development/PaternityBrief.pdf

DOL report The Cost of Doing Nothing: http://www.dol.gov/featured/paidleave/cost-of-doing-nothing-summary.pdf

EO requiring paid leave for government contractors: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/08/executive-order-establishing-paid-sick-leave-federal-contractors

DOL fact sheet on paid family and medical leave: http://www.dol.gov/wb/PaidLeave/PaidLeave.htm