Digital Signature Legality for Sick Leave Policy in Mexico

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Sick Leave Policy in Mexico

County Free Library district for the being the primary sponsor of this and and also thank you to the Yavapai College Small Business Development uh Center and um whoops okay um also uh score of Northern Arizona and the northern Arizona Council of governments uh nacog for also being sponsors and and for their the services that they provide to businesses um before I dive into this um just a reminder that there will be another webinar uh that I'll be um I'll be doing next month November 30th it will be on paying your paying your people properly easier it's not that easy to say and it's also not not that easy to do paying your people properly so uh hopefully everyone who's on this one will also attend that one because it it does have some great information in it all right this is me I'm Laura Hamblin I'm an attorney in Human Resources consultant based in Prescott um and because I'm a lawyer I have to give you this this disclaimer that the information I'm going to be sharing today is for informational purposes only it's not legal advice and attending this webinar does not establish an attorney-client relationship um if you have questions as we go through if you could send them through the chat function Marie will be monitoring those what I'll do is I'll take questions probably it's a little past Midway where there's a good breaking point because I've found that when I do this presentation most of my slides will answer your questions as as we go but certainly do that we'll stop at that point and then at the end hopefully we'll have some time to take any remaining questions so this is I'm going to take you back in time to 2016. the voters in Arizona passed proposition 206 which became the fair wages and Healthy Families act that's what it's called approximately close to 60 percent of the voters voted for it many thought it was just a minimum wage law when in fact it's the minimum wage increase as well as the mandatory paid sick time which is what we're going to be talking about the industrial commission of Arizona is the agency responsible for enforcing this law and they published on their website 37 pages of frequently asked questions and they're very close together it's 37 pages of tightly packed uh questions and answers um and to look at though it's great information at least coming from a lawyer I find it it's very helpful but if you want to access that you can go to their website which is here on the uh on the slide as well as you can obtain the posters for both minimum wage and paid sick time and I one of the handouts that you received in addition to the slides was the poster for paid sick time and that hasn't changed since 2016. so but you do need to make sure and post it in the workplace now I'm just going to touch on minimum wage as I said it uh it was a two-part law it went from 805 to 12 an hour in in various steps and then it since then it's been adjusting based on cost of living the tipped wage is all can be three dollars an hour less than whatever the regular minimum wage is for the year if you've got employees who accept tips such as in the restaurant industry and if you're in that industry you're very well aware of this I'm sure just uh the the green section here were the steps that were part of that law the the graduated steps and then at the bottom of this slide if you can see it is uh it the highlighted portion showed this year which is the minimum wage is 1280 and then next year it's going up to 13.85 so a big increase and the federal minimum wage some states still follow that are um at seventh remain at seven and a quarter an hour although I'm sure they're having a hard time paying people uh getting people at that at that wage all right so now this is what this webinar is all about the paid sick time portion of the law um it the law defines an employer for for paid sick time coverage as all Arizona employers accept the state and federal government and that's because the voters can't pass a law that covers the state and federal government so so it applies to all employers except the state and federal government and so that means regardless of how large you are or what your revenue is this law applies to you so whether you're non-profit or for-profit even if you just have one part-time employee who may work eight hours a week um you're you're covered by this law so that's been a misconception some some employers think that non-profits aren't covered well yes they are and and small employers too so we talked about the employers that are covered which employees are covered well just just about everybody full-time part-time and temporary employees so so everyone regardless of the number of hours that they work uh they're covered by this law there are a few exceptions and that's the employees who are our children or siblings of the business owner um so if you employ your kids or your brother or sister if you employ your parents you have they're covered by the law or your aunt and uncle they're covered by the law it's just the children and siblings who would be exempt also casual babysitters who work in your home so this means like the Friday night date night when you want to go out and and your 16 year old down the street comes over to watch your children that you don't have to pay paid sick time to that person however if you have a nanny who stays with your children um every day of you know every weekday then that person would be an employee who would be covered by the law and since the state and federal government's not covered by the law their workers are not as well okay now paid sick time is a guarantee of paid time off for reasons listed in the law and we'll talk about reasons later um considerate wage replacement for the time missed so for example if somebody works Monday Tuesday Wednesday eight hours each day and then Thursday and Friday they work six hours for those days and they miss Thursday well they can't put in for eight hours of paid sick time because they were only scheduled to work six hours so you they would be entitled to six hours of paid sick time not eight hours and because it applies to part-time and temporary employees you can't establish a minimum hours worked requirement this was common prior to the law being passed that employers would have policies that said you have to work 20 hours a week or something like that to be eligible for our sick time policy you can't have those kinds of policies anymore because you can't have that well you just can't you can't have that minimum hours requirement um and I'm going to be talking about the minimum requirements that employers have to comply with this law so but the law makes it clear that you can have much more generous policies than what the law requires so you're not required to stick to the law you that's the minimum you can do much more okay so this is the basic premise of the paid sick time law employees accrue one hour one full hour of sick time for every 30 hours that they work so that's the basic part of it one hour for every 30 hours and if you have salaried exempt employees and as you know if you are salaried exempt you often work more than 40 hours um but for paid sick time accrual purposes you're deemed to work 40 hours so just for it's easy for record keeping rather than since you're probably not clocking in or out um you uh salaried exempt are deemed to work 40 hours now there are some salaried employees who are non-exempt who work less than 40 hours and in that case it would be the whatever their regular work week is whether it's 32 30 but for the most part it's 40 hours for full-time exempt now if you're an employer that has less than 15 employees less than 15 then your employees can accrue up to 24 hours of paid sick time each year 24 for if you have less than 15. if you have 15 or more employees your employees can accrue up to 40 hours of paid sick time each year so as you can see that's a pretty significant difference between 40 and 24th but especially cost wise for an employer so but you need to be aware that's that's the difference that's the threshold so I'm going to talk now about what if you're on that threshold or you go back and forth um well first of all you have to count all full-time part-time and temporary they're counted as one so a part-time person who only works 20 hours a week is not a 0.5 they're they're a one so full-time part-time and temporary employees and you have to accrue at the higher level which is the 40-hour rate if there were 15 or more employees on the payroll for some portion of a day in 20 different calendar weeks which don't have to be consecutive in the current year or the year the preceding year so the last year and I'll give you an example here and of course the employees can be different people it's not one person doesn't have to work 20 weeks it can be 20 different people um to be um for the counting purposes now let's say you had 15 employees last year in 2021 and um you've got 10 this year well this year you're going to have to accrue at the 40-hour level for your employees because last year you had uh you were at that that threshold of 15 employees so you need to be aware of that that if you are going back and forth it can definitely affect the accrual for your employees so you you just really should monitor that do I want to be above or below and or do you certainly don't want to be changing going back and forth at 24 to 40 or it's going to create all kinds of issues with your employees so okay now there's some more counting issues you need to be aware of if you have employees who solely work on tribal lands that's where they're assigned that's where they always work you don't have to count them for purposes of this law because the law doesn't apply um on on the tribal lands also you don't have to count employees who work outside of Arizona so and again if they solely do if they work if you've got employees who work on tribal lands and and off of them you know and you have employees who work in Arizona and the same employee Works in Arizona and then in New Mexico or whatever other state um you've got to count those people because they are working in Arizona but the ones who solely work outside of Arizona and solely work on the tribal lands you don't have to count for purposes of whether or not you're you're at 15 employees or less than 15 employees so um now if you've got and this happens relatively often with small employers that sometimes um a business owner will own more than one business and um for this law they can be regarded as a single employer if there's what they call sufficient commonality so if you've got overlapping Executives that they're you know president of both companies um uh you've got their operations are intermingling meaning that you've got the same person handles payroll for for the different businesses the same person does scheduling for the different businesses the more you've got that kind of commonality the more likely you're going to be regarded as a single employer for um for counting purposes so you would count if you've got business a and business B and one's got eight employees and the other's got ten um you know if they were separate they'd both be at you to be accruing at that lower rate of 24 hours but if you combine them into one employee one employer excuse me then you're having to accrue for those employees at 40 hours so also if you've got a supervisor who supervises in both businesses so um that's that's important to know because it can really affect affect you as far as cost goes if you're not paying them at the if you're not allowing them to accrue at the higher rate and then you'd have an audit by the industrial commission and they determine it to be a single employer so just be aware of that okay now excuse me more on the accrual the accrual starts on the date of hire um you but you can require the employees to wait 90 days before taking sick leave so you don't start accruing after the 90 days you start accruing on day one they just can't take it and this should be in your policy I I encourage all of you employers to have a written policy so that there's no question on for your employees or your your managers on how to manage this paid sick time so I would put in there for sure that employees cannot take paid sick time until they've worked at least 90 days now you can front load and I'll talk more about front loading in a little while you can do what's called front loading which is granting their the employees their full paid sick time entitlement at the beginning of the year you can do this instead of accruing if you want um and many employers like to do this because it it's administratively much easier than having to go through the accrual process but it's also can be more costly depending upon your business if you have high turnover or you have mainly part-time employees then it probably is not the best thing for you because it can be more costly so just a little example here so you've got a full-time employee so he's say a 40-hour employee he's worked 90 days and after his 90-day period he takes 40 hours of sick time because you front loaded it he's got that full amount available um and then he quits after he goes out sick um if you had accrued he probably wouldn't have accrued more than 16 hours during that 90 days so you know you've paid out 40 hours when if in the same scenario under the accrual it would have been 16 hours so it can make a difference but again um it it really depends on your business and that really that is the good thing about this law is you can design your policy to meet the needs of your business um but that's one thing to think about now this may you may think what do you mean what's how is your defined that seems pretty basic well it's it's not quite that basic um the law defines a year as a regular and consecutive 12-month period as determined by the employer so employers it's it's you get to make the decision it can be a calendar year and most policies are on a calendar year basis because it coincides with the payroll year it's much easier for record-keeping purposes um but I there are also employers that use the their fiscal year or their employees anniversary year which is um you know from their higher date to the anniversary of their higher date um some employers started their year at when the law first started which was July 1st which was back in 2017. um and so there are a number of employers that their law their laws their their year is going from July 1st to June 30th but it's up to you employers how you want to do this one thing to be aware of though if you use any year other than an anniversary year and you want to prorate to get them on to what your regular year when you accrue you cannot prorate um you can't do a proration to get for that first partial year so for example if I'm hired on on July 1st you may think well that's six months into the calendar year I should I'll just allow you to accrue no more than um 20 hours and this is a 40-hour employer well you can't do that because if they work let's say they work a lot of overtime then they could accrue much more than 20 hours for that six-month period so when you accrue you can't do it however when you front load that it does allow proration so in that same example if I was hired on July 1st my employer could front load me 20 hours of paid sick time but my employer also when it comes to sometime around November needs to look back and say okay how many hours would she have earned if she had been on an accrual basis and if it's more than 20 they need to supplement my paid sick time now in reality I don't know how many employers are actually doing this but the law does does require it it's to me administratively burdensome but it it does at least not the law the uh the Industrial Commission in their in their FAQs has said that's what needs to be done so um annual use of paid sick time the this is basic the usage limits are the same as the accrual cap so if you're um if you have less than 15 employees your employees can be limited to no more than 24 hours of earned paid sick time per year using only 24 hours and we'll talk in a minute how they could actually have more than 24 hours um so they they earn 24 hours and they use 24 hours now again you can be more generous and allow them to use more but you can limit it at the 24 hours and employers with 15 or more employees the employees can be limited to no more than 40 hours of earned paid sick time each year okay um now this is how they can have more than the the 24 or 40 hours when you do the accrual method you have to carry over unused paid sick time from one year to another you have to you're required to so um but the maximum annual accrual and use limits still apply so that means that employees can continue to they continue to accrue sick time but not be able to take more than 24 or 40 hours and I'll give you an example because I know this sounds you're probably your eyes are probably rolling around in your heads when when I'm saying this um here it is so year one I accrue 24 hours of paid sick time because I work for an employer that has less than 15 employees I use four hours so that makes 20 hours that I haven't used for the year so 20 hours carry over from year one to year two and I can I continue to work throughout the year two I accrue 24 more hours so that 24 plus the 20 hours of carryover is 44 hours but I can be limited by my employer to taking only 24 hours of paid sick time in year two because the law allows it but my employer can let me take the full 44 if they want but they can also limit me to the 24. so um this can be very confusing to employees and employers alike so you just need to understand how it works and um when we talk about record keeping what you know I'll I'll also mention this but um just be aware that that's how that works um now the reason you're required to have to carry over from one year to another think about it if there was no carryover and if you if the employee was had to Forfeit it at year end then they start all over at the beginning of the next year accruing so it takes if they got sick in January or February then they're going to have hardly any paid sick time um to use but so that's what the carryover is for so that 20 hours that in that one example that carried over if I got sick in January at least I would have that and maybe a couple of other hours that I accrued um to take while I was out sick so um that's the whole purpose of the carryover is is so that it's available at the beginning of the year now you can cap the amount that's carried over so based on the you know whatever size of employer you are so um if in that one example where if I had um where I carried over 20 hours to year two and then I accrued uh 24 hours in you year two so I had if I didn't use any of it I would have 44 hours in that case going into year three my employer can say no Laura the only the one the only amount you can carry over is 24 hours because we're one of the smaller employers so I would have to Forfeit that 20 hours um that that 20 additional hours that I didn't take and that had been carried over from the previous year so you can require employees to Forfeit it you can also pay if you want as an employer you can pay that unused paid sick time that's above the cap so again they're required to carry over um up to 24 or 40 depending upon the size of the employer and anything in addition to that you can either have the employee forfeit or you can pay it out so kind of like an end of the year bonus which there are some real pros to that because otherwise if people know that they're going to be forfeiting 20 hours of paid sick time nine and a half times out of ten or 99.9 percent of the time employees are going to end up getting sick at the end of the year so they can take that time it just happens it's human nature I think okay now when you front load you are not required to carry over unused paid sick time from one year to another and if you think about it it's because the same purpose is achieved um as the carryover in the accrual example because when you front load it's there at the beginning of the year so there's no need to do that carryover because it's there they can take it if they get sick or their child sick in the beginning of of the year so but um you can as an employer you can carry it over if you want you can allow them to do that you can pay it out or you can require them to Forfeit it so um but the main thing to re to understand is that you don't have to carry over when you front load you do have to carry over when you accrue um and we just talked about this you you know you can't pay out it you can't pay out it this is this is apparently uh one of the things that that employers are not quite sure of on on the accrual remember you're required to carry over up to 24 or 40 hours of unused paid sick time at the end of the year you can't pay out you can only pay out anything above that cap you can't pay out the full amount you've got to got to carry over when you accrue so um carry over up to the cap all right now some of you may be wondering you may have employees who are paid on commission or or piece rate or something that's different than just a straight hourly rate of pay or or salary um so if you do have those employees and you're not sure what you would pay them if they're out on paid sick time what the commission says is that you uh the industrial commission is that you can there are four options for you the first one you can do an agreed upon rate between the employer or employee and this is something that has to be in writing and in your policy in advance and then it's considered to be is if you give it to the employee that give the policy to them then it's considered to be an agreed upon rate so if your policy says when you're out on paid sick time commission employee you will be paid 15 an hour for that for those hours unpaid sick time then that's deemed to be agreed upon I think that's the easiest but it it's that they give you three other options um you could pay them the wages they would have been paid if you know what those would have been I guess that's easy um you can estimate the wages they would have been paid or you can average the wages from the previous 90 days and turn that into an hourly rate um and pay them that way so those are four options for you if you do have employees that are um kind of those different compensation methods now if you have tipped employees tips are excluded from pay when um determining the hourly rate so um you pay the minimum wage so right now it would be 1280. so if if I own a restaurant and my employees my server I have a server who goes out and that server normally averages twenty dollars an hour when they accept tips so the tip to rate compensation plus plus tips I don't have to pay that person twenty dollars an hour I I pay them 1280. um next year it will be 13.85. so I went to I did one of these workshops early on and I had an employer come up to me and she owns a restaurant in Sedona and she said that her employees average fifty dollars an hour with tips and she said there's no way I can pay that much and uh fortunately uh they the industrial commission clarified for those employers that they're they you know they that they can pay they have to pay 1280 they don't pay the tipped rate they pay the regular minimum wage or they can pay more if they want um now if you have employees who receive premium pay or shift differential pay such as let's say you get paid an additional three dollars an hour for uh someone who works after 5 PM or on weekends um if they were scheduled to work during a night or a weekend then you have to pay them what they would have lost had they worked so again it's wage replacement so they don't get paid just their regular hourly rate they would have been they'd get their regular hourly rate plus that premium pay as paid sick time okay now this is where I take questions um Marie are there any questions in the uh in the chat we do have a couple of questions um let me go back and hit the first one first um because I've been telling them that you were going to answer um do companies have to pay sick time as our company only has PTO time okay we're um we'll be talking about uh PTO in in just a minute uh the answer to that is as long as your PTO plan meets the requirements of the paid sick time law you can do a PTO plan and I'll talk about that in just a minute so good question okay and another one here is is um is it up to the employer's discretion to pay paid sick time to the owner's children yes yes it would be that would be something that you know the owner certainly needs to be the the owner should probably be involved in that decision I would think um but again under the law the the children of the owner and the siblings of the owner if they're employees they they are not covered employees under this law so it would be yes it would be discretionary and certainly you could treat them like other employees and pay them um but um it just is you're not required to by the law by the law okay and then um follow-up to that one was from what I understand they can't pay out what is left at year end um though right unless they have more than a loud carryover question mark right yeah and I think that's what I just just talked about is um yeah if you accrue if you do the accrual method you have to you can't pay out the entire amount of unused paid sick time at year end you have to carry over up to the 24 or 40 hours depending upon the size of the employer but if there's more than that you can pay out that additional amount above the cap but otherwise under the cap yes you have to have to carry it over you can't pay it out okay and um if you don't address this um after the presentation please clarify 24 sick time not used at end of year can employer choose to pay out the 24 sick time not used for the year no I think I think that's what I just just talked about no if only the only time you can pay it out um if it's under that cap under the 24 or 40 hours the only time you can pay it out at your end is if you if you front load if you use the front load method if you accrue you have to require you have to pay or excuse me you have to carry it over from year one to year two so you can only pay out the amount above the cap okay perfect and I think that's all the questions for now if you want to carry on okay all right so we've talked about that What's um the accrual or front loading and and um now let's talk about the reasons that an employee can use paid sick time the employer or the employee's family member has a mental or physical illness injury or health condition or needs preventative care or a medical diagnosis so this would include going to get a vaccine this would include uh going actually going to the dentist for preventative care um it and or for a diagnosis if they haven't they may not be ill but they may think they may have something so it's and it could be mental or physical illness um so it's it's pretty broad here and it gets even more broad closure of the employees workplace or the child School due to a public health emergency when this law was passed it was before the pandemic and I thought this would hardly ever be used but it sure was the last couple of years absence due to domestic or sexual violence abuse or stalking of the employee or a family member unfortunately this happens more often than not but this is also a covered reason under the paid sick time law um and this is something you need to be aware of as well that sick time can be used in the smallest increment on the employees the employer's payroll system so if you're if you have a time clock that people clock in on and it's they're they're paid by the minute then they can take paid sick time by the minute you know most employees are not going to do that but um but also if you have on your your time clock it rounds to the nearest six minute or seven minute increment then they can do it based on the smallest increment which would be six or seven minutes if you don't have a a system where they clock in where they just do a time card then the greatest increment that you can require them to use is an hour so you can't require them to be that if they take paid sick time they have to take the full day you can't do that um so for example if I call in sick or let's say I don't call in sick I call I say I'm going to be late because my child is sick and I have to take that child to a daycare provider rather than to school and so I'm late for an hour and 24 minutes then um I can ask to have paid sick time for that for that time um especially if I use if I clock in and it's at the if if I'm paid by the minute or it's rounded to the six six minute increment in that case um if I'm if I do a manual time card it's more likely that I would be paid an hour and say 15 minutes if it's you know usually when you do a time card um most employers round that to the 15 minutes so um but just the main point here is that you can you can't require them to take a full day or a half day off for paid sick time now who is a family member as you can see on the reasons for using paid sick time it says the employee or the employee's family member has a mental or physical illness Etc um so who is a family member well the question the better question is who is not a family member um because this is the most broad definition you could ever imagine child parent spouse domestic partner grandparent grandchild sibling regardless of age adopted Foster and step relations of the employee the person who acted as a parent to the employee but it's not related um so you know if the if an aunt took care of the child as the child was growing up but they're not related they're not otherwise related as in this definition or it could be a neighbor or the employee is acting as a parent to a child even though that child is not related to them and family members of the employee spouse or domestic partner so it goes out it goes out and it's super Broad and any person related by blood or Affinity whose close association with the employee is equivalent to a family relationship so this would be possibly a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend even though they're not they're not a domestic partner or a spouse um could be an aunt and uncle which is not included in this so really the advice that I typically give to to um clients is just don't question who the family member is because it is going to almost always fall within this definition the one thing they did say is a service dog is not a family member however if something happens to that service dog and let's say the service dog gets ill or dies and the employee is distraught over it then that person would likely let's go back it would fall within one of the reasons here that the employee uh would need preventative care for a mental illness which would be the emotional uh trauma or medical diagnosis anyway it would probably fall within the reason uh anyway so but the the dog itself is not considered a family member now I have dogs I consider them to be family members but but not under this law okay are employees required to give advance notice um to use sick time well if it's a foreseeable absence so for example I know that I am going to have to have a knee have knee surgery and then I need to make a good faith effort to give advance notice and schedule with my employer so it it doesn't disrupt the employer's operation so if I work for an employer that's in retail certainly at the end of the year during the holidays that's so busy um I should schedule it so that it's either before or after the holiday season but it just says good faith effort so hopefully employees will will pay attention to that and work with the employer to try to uh try to do that so preventative doctor's appointment elective surgery are some examples unforeseeable leave this is when you wake up and you're sick or your child is sick you as an employer can require Pride note prior notice from that employee if you have a written policy that has procedures for providing notice um as long as you gave them a copy of the policy again another good reason to have a written policy so you can require the most common one is you know you need to call in or text call or text an hour in advance of your shift I've got a client who has daycare facilities they're required to have a specific Staffing for those day care facilities and they open at 6 a.m so if someone calls in sick what they require in their policy is you have to provide 12 hours notice so you have to call by 6 PM the night before just to give that employer time to fill the the vacancy because they can't run the business without it so um that's the longest that I've seen but it's reasonable based on the business It's just sometimes hard to know that you're going to be sick so there are pros and cons to that other notice issues requests for sick time can be made orally in writing by electronic means or any other means acceptable to the employer but again put it in writing what you want them to do and if possible the employee should give you the expected duration of the absence that's not always possible this is important because this used to be in policies prior to the lobbying passed you can't require an employee to to find a replacement worker as a condition of taking paid sick time so um that's on that's on the employer now if they do it if the employee does it that's great but you can't require them to do that um paid sick time is what's called what's considered protected leave they're entitled to this under the law so you can't discipline employees for taking the time off unless it exceeds that statutory amount so unless it exceeds the 24 or 40 hours depending upon the size of the employer so if you have an attendance policy that gives people an An Occurrence that's usually the language that's used for each time they're off you can't count these these absences um under that attendance leave policy it's anything beyond that those absences you can count but not the ones that are covered under the law so make sure you take a peek at your attendance policy if you have one and to to ensure that it doesn't violate the law now can you request documentation from the employee to support their leave well yes but um the employer can require documentation only if the employee has been absent for three or more consecutive work days so if I'm scheduled on um Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and I I call out Monday I work Tuesday and I'm out Wednesday and Thursday I can't my employer can't ask me for a doctor's note or a health care provider note because I wasn't out for three or more consecutive work days I was out for three days three work days but they weren't consecutive because I worked on Tuesday so you've basically just got to take the employee's word that they're out for a reason and you can't ask for support unless it's been the three consecutive work days if it's a medical related absence um a document signed by the health care a health care professional saying that sick time was necessary is sufficient you don't want to know the specific details you don't need to know it unless you're a large employer and when I say large employer you have at least 50 employees and you're covered by the family in Medical Leave Act and when I say 50 it's 5-0 um 50 employees triggers the Family and Medical Leave Act under the FMLA there are certain circumstances where you are required to get very detailed information about a medical condition but under this paid sick time law no um that doesn't doesn't apply but anyway if and again if a federal law is uh it would the FMLA is a federal law so if you are a larger employer yes you are required to do this under certain circumstances but other than that you can't you can't unless it's been the three consecutive work days if it's a domestic violence absence the employee can provide a copy of police report protective order a number of other things and even the employee's written statement is enough for a domestic violence absence okay let's talk about when someone leaves there's no requirement under the law to pay out unused sick time upon termination of employment regardless of the reason an employee left and I would definitely put this in your policy um it's important to have that in there if if that's the way you want to do it or you can pay it out however if someone is they leave let's say someone quits and then you rehire them six months later and they forfeited 20 hours of paid sick time you're required under the law if it's rehire within nine months to credit that back to the employee and they have that in their balance that they can take without waiting 90 days so um doesn't happen that often but when it does just be aware that that you've got to do that um and I'm not going to talk about this this is just if you take over a business that you also have to honor the paid sick time um in most circumstances or some circumstances um all right someone asked about the PTO policy um if you have a paid time off policy that meets or exceeds the this Law's minimum requirements then you don't have to provide a separate paid sick time in addition to your PTO policy the thing is you have to allow you need to make sure that that it meets all of the requirements of the law so it's it it's got to apply to all employees um they've got to be able to get as much a crew as much or get front loaded as much as what the the paid sick time Law requires and they have to be able to use it for any of those reasons and again you can't require them to take full days of PTO if it's for a reason under the paid sick time law there so you've got to make sure that your PTO policy meets the requirements of the law now there are some options and this is where when I said that you could be pretty creative and flexible depending upon your business um you could have a broad PTO policy that that that applies to all employees and that's what basically what I was just talking about the you can do accrual you can front load um or you can actually do both um you can treat full-time and part-time employees differently if you want as long as you otherwise meet the requirements of the the policy you can have exempt employees treated differently than non-exempt if you want you just can't have Mary and Joe who are both the same employ same job you can't treat them differently that would violate probably other laws but um so this is one option you can have a broad PTO policy that applies to all employees you can have a PTO policy for full-time employees that also meets the Law's requirements and then just have a basic paid sick time policy for part-time and temporary employees so the the minimum requirement paid sick time so you could have PTO policy for for some people and um and sorry I just wrote on the the screen and didn't realize I was doing that a PTO policy for full-time employees and then the basic paid sick time for the for the others um you could have a vacation policy for full-time and a basic paid sick time policy for all employees I think this is probably one of the easiest ones because you can put a lot of restrictions on vacation um say that they have to take it in full day or even full week increments um where and that's something they have to do in advance to be authorized in advance and then you could have the basic paid sick time for reasons that otherwise apply just under the law that would be for all employees the 24 or 40 for for all employees and then full-time also get that additional vacation but it's it depends on your business what's best but you can do that you can front load for full time and you can accrue for part-time you can do that with either a paid sick time policy or a PTO policy that meets the P the paid sick time law requirements so there there's lots of options that you can do um notices required you have to include with each employee's paycheck um and this can be if you have if it's all online that's fine it doesn't have to be hard copy but you have to tell them these three things the amount of earned and the the industrial commission calls it they use the acronym epst earn paid sick time so that's it to me I it's just paid sick time but earn pay epst is what they call but the amount of earned paid sick time available to the employee to use in the year so um and then the amount of sick time they took this year and then the dollar amount that they received for the the sick time that they took this year so what what they have available their balance what they took and the dollar amount of what they took now also if you're doing the accrual it's helpful or you've had carryover to have the amount the full amount that they've got kind of in the balance but they need to know if if they're not able to take all of that balance that's why you have to have that separate amount um showing what's available for them to use so those three things and then that fourth thing if you depending upon how you do your paid sick time policy you have to post a notice of their rights and that was that poster and um you also post the Arizona minimum wage poster which are available on their website now um payroll records there haven't there's been no change in um how long you keep those but you need to keep them for four years at least four years uh the the payroll records as well as the paid sick time records and um you have to have track the accrual usage payment and carryover of sick time so that all has to be available if you're ever audited if there's a complaint you've got to be able to to have this in writing to provide to the um to the industrial commission and same thing if your PTO plan meets the requirements of paid sick time law now the the um excuse me I'm just checking the time on make sure we don't run over there are strong no retaliation or and um no just non-discrimination Provisions in this law very strong and in fact um it says retaliation is the denial of any right under the law any threat um discharge suspension demotion reduction of hours or any other adverse action taken against the employee and any adverse action taken against the employee within 90 days of the employee asserting their rights and their under the laws presumed to be retaliation and can only be overcome by clear and convincing evidence so give you an example let's say I took a day of paid sick time six weeks ago and then I'm fired for falsifying my time card um I can go to the industrial commission and claim retaliation under the paid sick time law and it's presumed to be retaliation unless my employer can show through clear and convincing evidence that I falsified my time card that I was fired for false to find my time card and not for taking a day of vacation six weeks ago so this is where good Human Resources practices come into play and employers need to make sure that their documenting well why they take adverse action against an employee because if it's challenged you can you can overcome it you can show that what the reason you fired me was was actually a very valid reason and had nothing to do with me taking a day of paid sick time because penalties are steep under this law if the industrial commission finds that you have not paid uh sick time appropriately then they're going to say that you owed the balance plus interest and then two more times so it's basically three times you pay them it's called treble damages three times what you owe them plus interest on one of those times and um then attorney fees and costs if if an attorney is involved but an attorney doesn't have to be involved they can file a claim uh within one year the employees can um and and then they have two years to file a lawsuit but I think the most likely event would be an administrative complaint through the industrial commission they don't need a lawyer they just it's an online form um retaliation if you're found to have retaliated against no less than 150 dollars for each day of the violation or until legal judgment is final if you could that would be just if it's filed with any you know say almost a year that's huge and the employee the court could order reinstatement of the employee or the industrial commission or posting of notices in the workplace and then record-keeping violations or posting violations if you don't post those notices at least 250 dollars for the first violation a thousand for subsequent or willful violations so now the industrial commission um is enforcing and trying to educate employees uh or employers these I reached out to an investigator I know and she said the most common employer employer errors are incorrect or incomplete accrual of paid sick time not maintaining records or providing the pay stub information not allowing employees to take paid sick time when requested again it's for virtually almost any reason so you've just got to be careful um and then not making paid sick time policy accessible to employees lots of record keeping and she said there's lots of lots of confusion when people when employers have PTO policies so making clear in your policy that it does comply with the with the law excuse me I didn't mean to go back that far and the complaints can be anonymous so these I gave you copies of the questionnaire that you would get if there is a complaint filed against you the the questionnaires on the right and then the other thing they call it an education document is to just gives you some resources that you can look at to learn about the law so I went through that quickly and we have one one can I take one question and then I'll that will be it I'm so sorry yeah um I'll I'll send one to you here uh to clarify If an employer adopts a front load method for sick time and at year end the employee has more than 24 hours left is it a requirement that the employer pay out the excess of 24 hours no if you front load if you front load you don't have to pay out any unused paid sick time um and one more um can employers require employees to find coverage for their scheduled shift if they call in sick no you cannot require that absolutely not so they made that clear in the law so if you have any other questions well yeah feel free to send me an email um this is my my email address and and I'd be happy to answer your questions um you said one more what well one real quick one quick one yeah is it a requirement to credit a former employee that is rehired within nine months I think you answered that already yeah yeah um so last thing um that I just want to remind everybody that uh Fannie will be sending out a survey uh to see how everyone feels about this presentation and please don't forget that they uh last in Laura's series will be on November 30th and we will um be here on a hybrid method uh so you can either log on online or we will be in person at the Yarnell Library so thank you everybody for joining us today and most of all thank you Laura and uh please send all your questions to Laura at Laura hamlinjd gmail.com thank you thank you everybody