Massachusetts Paid Sick Days Act (H. 1398 and S. 930)

The General Court is considering imposing a one-size-fits-all mandate on all businesses in Massachusetts -- that all employees earn up to 7 paid sick days per year to care for themselves, their child, spouse, parent, or the parent of a spouse.  It will have a huge impact on the cost of doing business in the Bay State.

If adopted, this law would allow employees -- including seasonal and part-time employees -- to accrue one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours on the job, up to a maximum of seven paid days per year.  All employees would be eligible for this benefit starting on their first day of employment.  These bills would only require that the worker provide documentation of the leave after three consecutive days off had been taken.  This makes it impossible to prohibit employees from abusing the benefit, and directly interferes with an employer's ability to run their business.

For business owners, this mandate may require overtime, hiring temporary workers, and additional training costs.  For the state's economy, it means the loss of 50,000 jobs, with 28,000 of those coming from the small business sector (companies with less than 100 employees), and the loss of $10 billion in economic activity.

This proposal ignores the fact that many employers already have a formal policy for ‘paid time off’ and most small business owners already arrange for their employees to take time off as needed, and the reality that small businesses need flexible policies that better fit the needs of their employees and their business.

The Chamber opposes this legislation because we feels it is unnecessary to create laws for matters that are resolved between employers and employees everyday and the cost to employers during this time of economic uncertainty jeopardizes job creation and the back bone of our economy—small businesses!.

These bills are currently before the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development.