Apr 5, 2018
State House, Senate set to consider labor bills
This week, both chambers of the state Legislature have added labor bills to their calendars for consideration during their respective caucuses. These bills recently have been given joint favorable reports from the Joint Labor and Public Employees Committees and could potentially impact producers and their clients in their capacity as a business owner. Below is a summary of the bills being considered in each chamber:
H.B.5387, An Act Concerning Paid Family Medical Leave/S.B.1, An Act Concerning Earned Family and Medical Leave
H.B.5387/S.B.1 would create the Family and Medical Leave Insurance program to provide wage replacement benefits to certain employees taking leave under the state’s Family and Medical Leave Act or the Family Violence Leave Law. It would provide such employees with up to 12 weeks of FMLI benefits over a 12-month period in an amount equal to 100 percent of weekly earnings, up to a maximum of $1,000 per week, or an inflation-adjusted equivalent.
The program would also provide two additional weeks of benefits for a serious health condition during pregnancy that results in incapacitation. Under the bill, employees would be eligible for benefits are people who earned at least $2,325 from one or more employers during their highest earning quarter within the five most recently completed calendar quarters and are employed by an employer with at least two employees or unemployed; and sole practitioners and self-employed people who enroll in the program.
The program would be funded by employee contributions, although the bill also authorizes up to $20 million in bonds ($10 million in FY 19 and $10 million in FY 20) to pay for the program’s start-up costs, and any funds expended from the General Fund to administer the program or provide benefits would be required to be reimbursed by Oct. 1, 2021. The bill establishes the FMLI Trust Fund to hold employee contributions and pay for FMLI benefits and administrative costs. The bill would cap employee contributions at 0.5 percent of an employee’s earnings and also cap the amount of an employee’s earnings subject to contributions at the amount of earnings subject to Social Security taxes. If employee contributions prove to not be sufficient to ensure the program’s solvency, the Department of Labor must reduce the aggregate number of days or weeks of benefits offered to levels that ensure the program’s solvency.
The FMLI would begin paying benefits on July 1, 2021, but employee contributions would begin before that date. Also effective on July 1, 2021 would be changes to various provisions of the current FMLA. These changes include: 1. extending the FMLA to cover private-sector employers with at least two, rather than 75, employees; 2. lowering the employee work threshold to qualify for leave to (a) six months of employment with their employer and (b) 500 work-hours with the employer during the 12 months preceding the leave (current law requires 12 months of employment and 1,000 work-hours); 3. changing the maximum FMLA leave allowed for currently covered private-sector employees from 16 weeks over a 24-month period to 12 weeks over a 12-month period, and allowing an additional two weeks of leave due to a serious health condition during pregnancy that results in incapacitation; 4. eliminateing an employer’s ability to require an employee taking FMLA leave to use his or her employer-provided paid sick time or other employer-provided paid leave; 5. adding to the family members for whom an employee can take FMLA leave to include the employee’s siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, and anyone else related by blood or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family member; and 6. requiring employers to allow their employees to use up to two weeks of any employer-provided paid sick leave for the serious health condition of the employee’s sibling, grandparent, and grandchild (including each of those related by marriage) and anyone else related by blood or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family member.
Though the bills made it through the committee, they still have a hurdle in their respective chambers. With the budget deficit ever growing, the startup costs could derail the bill’s passage, as it has in previous sessions. According to the Office of Fiscal Analysis, the program will incur start-up administrative costs to the DOL of at least $13.6 million prior to FY 21. The start-up costs include approximately $4.7 million in salaries and fringe costs, $7.7 million for information technology, $776,700 for overhead and capital needs and $340,000 for outreach and marketing. The bill includes authorization of $20 million of General Obligation bonds.
H.B.5044, An Act Concerning Fair Treatment of Sick Workers
H.B.5044 would expand the state’s paid sick leave law and require employers with less than 20 employees to provide 40 hours of unpaid sick leave. The first key change in the bill would expand the requirement to provide paid sick days to cover employers with at least 20, rather than 50, employees. It would also eliminate exemptions for manufacturers and certain non-profit employers, thus placing these employers under the bill’s sick-leave requirements.
The bill would also prohibit employers from requiring employees using paid or unpaid sick leave to search for or find a replacement employee to cover the period they are out on leave. It also would extend eligibility for sick leave (both paid and unpaid) to any employees paid on an hourly basis or covered by federal minimum wage and overtime pay requirements, rather than limiting it to “service workers” in certain specified job categories. Lastly, the bill would expand the allowed uses of sick leave so that eligible employees may use it for their parents’ health issues, to bond with a newborn or newly adopted child and when a child’s school is closed due to a public health emergency.
H.B.5386, An Act Concerning Various Pay Equity And Fairness Matters/S.B. 15, An Act Concerning Fair and Equal Pay for Equal Work
H.B.5386/S.B.15 would prohibit an employer from inquiring, or directing a third party to inquire about a prospective employee’s wage and salary history before an offer of employment that includes wages has been accepted by the prospective employee, unless a prospective employee has voluntarily disclosed such information. This is a prohibition that is seen in other states, as well as on the municipal level of states without statewide prohibitions.
H.B.5388, An Act Concerning a Fair Minimum Wage
H.B.5388 would increase the state’s minimum hourly wage from $10.10 to $12 on Jan. 1, 2019; to $13.50 on Jan. 1, 2020; and to $15 on Jan. 1, 2021. Under the bill, wages would similarly increase each year for learners, beginners and people younger than age 18, who by law can be paid at a rate equal to 85 percent of the minimum wage for their first 200 hours of employment. The bill also would increase the employer’s share of minimum wages for hotel and restaurant wait staff and bartenders each year because it does not change the “tip credit” allowed by law.
H.B.5043, An Act Promoting a Fair, Civil and Harassment-Free Workplace
H.B.5043 would amend CGSA Section 46a-54(15) to require an employer having three or more employees to post in a prominent and accessible location information concerning the illegality of harassment on the basis of any status protected by the Connecticut discriminatory practices statute. Such harassment may include, but is not limited to, sexual harassment, and the remedies available to the targets of such harassment must also be posted. This section would remove “sexual harassment” and replace it with a general harassment prohibition, thus making the statute broader.
The bill also would require an employer having 15 or more employees to provide on or before Oct. 1, 2019, two cumulative hours of awareness and anti-harassment compliance training and education to all supervisory employees and after Oct. 1, 2019, such training and education for all new supervisory employees not later than six months after their assumption of a supervisory position. Any employer who has provided this training and education to any such employees after Oct. 1, 2017, is not required to provide the training and education a second time. Furthermore, on or before Oct. 1, 2019, an employer with 15 or more employees must provide the anti-harassment training and education to all nonsupervisory employees and after Oct. 1, 2019, for all new non-supervisory employees not later than six months after their date of hire.