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Now that Mother’s Day is over and Father’s Day is rapidly approaching, it’s worthwhile to consider the Maine FMLA law. Employees never know when a personal event will cause them to miss time at work. Perhaps they get sick, or a child is adopted, or maybe a close family member falls ill. The Maine Family and Medical Leave Act, also known as FMLA, can help.

The Maine FMLA is very important, and a poster explaining how it works should be on display in every workplace throughout the state. On this poster, employees can find information about the program basics. Included on the poster is information about the benefits provided by this program and how employees can determine if they are eligible.

If an employer has 50 or more workers, then the company has to comply with regulations regarding FMLA. Public employees and school teachers are the exception to this requirement in as much as they are covered even if their employer has fewer than 50 workers.

The Maine FMLA law allows employees to take some time off while protecting their jobs. The way the law works is that once a year, employees can take off up to 12 weeks without pay and not lose their jobs. Restrictions apply, of course, but allowed situations include a serious illness experienced by either the employee or a close family member, the arrival of a child either through birth or adoption, and placement of a foster child.

When employees take leaves under the Maine FMLA, they need to make certain they understand all of the conditions. All written instructions need to be followed, and employees need to stay in touch with their employers.

Although some states don’t follow the federal FMLA program and instead have their own programs, Maine follows the federal program. The states that have their own programs have similar standards to the federal program.

You can add Maine to that list of states where employers could see legislation for a mandatory sick leave requirement on employers. There is a coalition of lobby groups, worker groups, and others—including the Maine Women’s Lobby and more than 30 other organizations—that are asking the state legislature to pass a bill that would be a legal sick day minimum in the state.

The bill is already in existence, having been introduced into the state legislature by Democrat Rep. Jackie Norton from Bangor, Maine. Rep. Norton’s bill is titled “An Act to Care for Working Families” also known as LD 1454. It would mandate that all employers with 25 or more employees have to allow their workers to build up one hour of sick leave—paid sick leave—for every 30 hours that they work. Do the math, and that comes to four hours of sick leave every three weeks, or a full day of paid sick leave after a month and a half of working 40 hour weeks. The total in a year that workers can build up, according to the Norton law, would be 72 hours of sick day a year, or nine days.

This system would be quite similar to the way that San Francisco, California, has set up its own minimum sick day law. There, the law is already in effect, and as we learned a few blog posts ago, the city is still learning how to enforce the regulation, and how to ease employers into the new requirement without burdening the smaller employers out there too much.

I can’t say just yet where the bill in Maine stands at the moment—I will do further research on the topic and keep my antenna out there to pick up on the latest news, my loyal readers.