labor lawAdivision of labor law center

A number of states require the employer to give employees unpaid time off  to attend school events such as parent-teacher conferences and classroom events. This includes California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont — all have school visitation laws.

The Colorado Academic Activities Leave Law applies to employers with 50 or more workers. It permits the parent or guardian of a K-12 student to take off 6 hours per month in increments of up to 3 hours each, up to a total of 18 hours per academic year. Paid leave may be substituted for the unpaid school visitation leave, but the law does not apply to supervisory employees.

Illinois provides for parents and guardians to take up to 8 hours of unpaid leave

California has two separate school visitation laws that prevent the employer from taking any negative action against employees who take unpaid school visitation leave. One law applies to (more…)

Of course, as with any bill that would change the labor laws of the state, this bill introduced by Sen. Kuehl has already attracted its share of critics. The California Chamber of Commerce, the organization that represents many employers in the state, has come out to say that it will not support the bill as is. It has said the new paid time off requirements would put a strain on employers in the state, and even lead to some of them having to hire and train temporary workers in order to compensate for the employees that go on paid family leave in order to care for family members and extended family members.

The other opponents of the bill have said, according to my sources, that the state government should not tell employers what sort of benefits program they should be able to afford. Some employers could be able to afford to allow their employees time off for such family matters, and in that case, it should be up to them to permit such time off policies to take placed at heir company, say these opponents of the new bill. In the case of employers, however, who cannot afford to give their employees so much time off, then that should be their prerogative not to allow such time off policies at their company.

However, at the moment, it is not up to business leaders and employers to decide what will happen with this bill. They can lobby their representatives and such, and I am sure they will, but it is now up to the Senators of California to vote on the bill from Kuehl and decide if family leave paid time off will be permitted for care of extended family members.

In the meantime, employers should be prepared for the passage of the law, as well as the possibility that a new Family and Medical Leave Law poster, or FMLA labor law poster, would be required for the state of California.

California could become the first in the nation to do something. It wouldn’t be the first time, as the state seems to be always in the forefront of something or other. But this something or other employers will want to know about if they have operations in the state, because it will affect how these employers give paid time off to their workers.

The state legislature is considered changing its law when it comes to how workers are allowed to take paid family leave time off, and in doing so, the sunshine state will become the first state in he entire country to allow its workers to take time off, paid time off, to care for a sick in-law. That means not just close family and themselves, but we’re talking a spouse’s father or mother, or perhaps even a brother-in-law or sister-in-law.

The bill that would make this revolutionary turn in paid time off regulation history is called Senate Bill 727. It was recently introduced into the state Senate by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat from Santa Monica. The bill would specifically give employees across the state more access to paid family leave time off.

The way it works in California currently is that family leave is giving to workers for up to six weeks, paid. That would include time off needed to care for a new baby, or to care for a sick parent, or one of their own children or spouses (or domestic partners). But the bill that Kuehl is putting on the table would allow employees to take this six weeks of time off to also care for more extended family members, such as the aforementioned in-laws, and even grandparents, grandkids, and brother and sisters. There is no estimate that I could find that would show how many more employees per year would be eligible to use this time under the new rules.