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The Maryland Flexible Leave Act requires employers to allow employees to use “leave with pay” for an illness in the employee’s immediate family.

Under this law, “leave with pay” includes vacation, PTO, sick leave, and personal leave. It also includes compensatory time, or “comp time” for those agencies or employers that provide it. Employees can only use paid leave that has been earned. Employers are not required to grant leave that has been accrued but not earned, under this law.

The act defines immediate family as a child, spouse or parent.     .

The new Maryland law does not require that employers offer paid leave of any sort. However, when a Maryland employer does offer such leave, he  or she must permit  employees to use it when a family member is sick.

Under new FMLA or Family and Medical Leave Act regulations that go into effect on January 17, 2009 employers must permit workers to use (more…)

Under a new law, Iowa employers must have an employee’s written permission before mailing a paycheck.

A change in Iowa’s Wage Payment Collection Law took effect recently. The change amended the existing Iowa payment law. The new law requires that employers have a written request from an employee before wages can be sent by mail. The law applies to paychecks, but not to paystub information.

The previous law permitted employers to mail paychecks when an employee made a verbal request, or at the employer’s discretion. While requiring written permission is a best practice in the HR field, Iowa is one of the few states to make that policy law.

Even employers who have routinely paid workers by mail must now have written authorization to do so.

The amendment to Iowa Code 91A.3 was passed by the Iowa Legislature and signed by Governor Chet Culver.

According to (more…)

Under section 202-j of the New York Labor Laws, employers are required to give workers up to 3 hours of unpaid leave, each year, for off-premises blood donation, or to hold blood drives at work. Employees must be permitted to take the time off during their regularly scheduled hours, without negative action by the employer or job repercussions. Blood donation leave cannot be carried over, so employees who fail to use the leave in 2008 are not entitled to 6 hours of unpaid leave in 2009.

This New York Employee Blood Donation Leave law is enforced by the New York Department of Labor, Division of Labor Standards.

Any additional time that employees may request for blood donation leave (more…)