Policymakers have been putting employers’ absence-management rules in a blender in the past few years.
The Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC) has given human resource managers and their benefits advisors a chance to grasp the magnitude of the changes by posting the written presentations for a human resources compliance conference it is holding this week in Washington online.
The conference focuses on compliance with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA).
For a look at some highlights from the sessions, read on.
1. More jurisdictions are requiring at least some employers to offer paid sick leave.
Geoffrey Simpson, Teri Weber and Mike Soltis provided a map showing that paid sick-leave laws affected employers in scattered communities on the West Coast and the Northeast a year ago, and now affect employers throughout California and many more communities in the Northeast.
The number of local communities with paid sick-leave laws has increased to 18, from seven a year ago, the speakers said.
Today, the speakers said, 48 percent of workers at establishments with fewer than 100 workers, and 18 percent of workers at bigger employers, have no paid sick leave.
2. Employers in some states have to think hard about marijuana.
In the past, some employers have tested employees regularly for use of marijuana and other illegal drugs, and disciplined or fired employees found to be using marijuana.
Now, in some states, using marijuana is no longer a state-law crime.
Francis Alvarez, a lawyer at Jackson Lewis, talked about the labor law implications of marijuana decriminalization in FMLA regulatory update.