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April 17, 2015

Some urging delay in implementing sick time law

Some Massachusetts employers want to push back the implementation of a voter-approved law instituting earned sick time for workers, saying they do not have enough time to make changes before the regulations take effect July 1.

Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a statewide business organization, is behind a push to delay the new law until January 2016.

"We are 75 days away from implementing a very complex law, a law that right now has no regulations," Christopher Geehern, executive vice president at AIM, said Thursday.

Voters approved a ballot question last November that mandates employers with 11 or more workers provide 40 hours of paid sick time, and those with less than 11 employees offer unpaid sick time. Workers must accrue the time.

Backers of earned sick time say thousands of people in the state have to choose between going to work sick or losing a day's pay, or sometimes their jobs. An official from Raise Up Massachusetts, the grassroots organization behind the ballot question, dismissed businesses' concerns about a time crunch.

Ben Wright, director of Raise Up Massachusetts, said the coalition worked hard to make sure the ballot question passed, and they want to see it implemented the way voters decided. The ballot question passed 59 percent to 40 percent last November.

"This is one of the most significant benefits for working people we have seen come into law in a very long time," Wright said Thursday.

"The public wants earned sick time, and we should go forward with implementation just as the voters voted," he added.

Geehern said employers are worried the law could go into effect only days before the regulations are finalized. Attorney General Maura Healey's office is writing the regulations, with draft regulations expected to be out later this month, according to a spokesman.

"Our office has been working extensively with stakeholders to draft regulations that make sense and clarify the law for both businesses and workers. We anticipate filing draft regulations by the end of the month to allow for an extensive public comment period, and are confident that final regulations will be filed prior to the law's effective date," AG spokesman Christopher Loh said in an email. "We continue to encourage all stakeholders to discuss their concerns with us so that we get this right."

Geehern said the AG's office was thrust into a tight timeframe and is working hard, but the business community right now lacks the "roadmap" the regulations would provide to start making changes before the law goes into effect.

Final regulations are expected to be published by mid-June, and go into effect July 3. But by law regulations - which are published twice a month - officially take effect when they are published by the Secretary of State's Office in the State Register, according to the AG's office.

Sen. Michael Rodrigues (D-Westport) briefly attempted to convince the Senate Wednesday to change the law's effective date until January 2016.

Rodrigues filed an amendment to legislation creating an early retirement incentive program for state workers that the Senate passed Wednesday. Rodrigues withdrew his amendment after he described the challenges businesses face with the deadline looming.

Rodrigues said he withdrew his amendment because it was the first time many senators had heard there was a problem. He still hopes to move the date back before July, he said.

To implement the sick time law, companies need to reset their human resources information systems, many of which are operated by third-party payroll companies, according to Geehern. Many employers say they need a 120-day lead time to make the changes, and "that has employers very worried about their ability to implement the law," he said.

Companies also need to sync up their current policies with earned sick time requirements, Geehern said. Some have questions about how to handle unused paid time off.

For example, if employees at one company get 15 days of paid time off (PTO), companies will need to separate the sick time. Then questions arise about whether workers will be paid for unused sick time that in the past they would have gotten paid for, according to Geehern.

"The process of fusing the requirements of the law with current benefit programs gets enormously complex," Geehern said.

Most employers start their fiscal year in January, so changing pay policies in the middle of the year also complicates things, he said.

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