On July 19, 2022, the Michigan Court of Claims ruled that the state legislature violated the Michigan Constitution in 2018 when it passed and amended two ballot initiatives during the same legislative period, one to raise the minimum wage and the other to require employers to grant paid sick leave. Citing public concerns about the ability of employers and relevant government agencies to immediately implement the changes requested in its decision, the court has now granted a stay of its order until February 20, 2023. The new law requires the employer to grant paid sick leave for one of the following reasons: you can use your sick leave if your main workplace is closed by order of a public servant due to a public health emergency, or to care for a child whose school or daycare has been closed due to a public health emergency by order of a public health official. On July 19, 2022, the Michigan Court of Claims ruled that the “adopt and amend” strategy used by the Michigan legislature in 2019 to pass minimum wage and paid sick leave laws was unconstitutional. These laws were considered more business-friendly, but they changed and differed significantly from the voter-initiated laws that the legislature had previously passed in the same legislature. For example, the amended legislation reduced the minimum wage increase from $12 to $10.10 per hour, lowered the required paid sick leave from 72 to 40 hours, exempted employers with fewer than 50 employees, and exempted certain employees such as managers, administrative staff, professionals and field workers. Part-time workers who worked an average of less than 25 hours per week were also exempt from the Paid Sick Leave Act. The laws are known as the Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA), which the legislature amended and renamed the Michigan Paid Medical Leave Act (MPMLA), and the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act (IWOWA), which was amended under the same name. In addition, unlike the AMP, the Earned Sick Leave Act contains a provision prohibiting an employer from retaliating against an employee who takes sick leave. Full-time, part-time and temporary workers are entitled to paid sick leave if the company has 50+ employees. (For more details on the events that led to the claims court decision, see our article, Michigan Court Voids State`s Minimum Wage and Paid Medical Leave Acts, Creating Compliance Limbo.) Nearly a year ago, the MPMLA made Michigan the eleventh state to introduce mandatory sick pay for employees. In Michigan (effective March 29, 2019), employers must allow their employees to accumulate up to 1 hour of sick leave per 35 hours worked. The law also requires an employer to allow an eligible employee to take up to 40 hours of sick leave in any 12-month eligibility period.
In addition, under the new law, an employee can transfer (or bank) up to 40 hours of unused sick pay. In addition to the role of paid sick leave in reducing gender inequality, many people in the service sector are not entitled to paid sick leave (e.g. restaurant employees, hotel employees, etc.). Workers in daycares and nursing homes are generally denied earned paid sick leave. Earned paid sick leave helps protect families` economic security and public health. Under the voting initiative (known as the Earned Sick Time Act), nearly all Michigan employers are required to offer 72 hours of sick leave per year. For large employers (with at least 10 employees), the 72 hours of vacation must be paid. Small employers, on the other hand, must provide at least 40 hours of paid sick leave per year, while the rest of the 72 hours of leave may be unpaid. According to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, employees would receive one hour of paid sick leave for every 35 hours worked and up to 40 hours per year.
Employers can limit an employee`s time to one hour per week. In addition, employees may be on sick leave every 40 hours at the beginning of one benefit year to avoid a transfer to the next. They all mean the same thing! All of these terms refer to the sick leave that employees receive based on the number of hours worked. Statistically, women are more likely to have family responsibilities outside of paid employment. Without paid sick leave, women are often forced to forego their family`s health care. Earned paid sick leave helps reduce this burden on women and promotes gender equality.