eSignature Legitimacy for Leave of Absence Agreement in Mexico

How to eSign a document: eSignature legitimacy for Leave of Absence Agreement in Mexico

nothing in today's presentation is or should be construed as legal advice this webinar is for informational purposes only so please call consult with a qualified attorney if you do need legal advice related to the healthy workplaces act i think that's all i've got it's all you kim all right thank you so much katie good afternoon everyone i'm pleased to welcome you to our employer focus presentation understanding new mexico's healthy workplaces act and employer obligations i'm kim souters acting director of the labor relations division for the new mexico department of workforce solutions we are here today to help you implement and comply with this new statewide law thank you all so much for attending we really appreciate your interest in this presentation today's agenda will contain the following first i'll clarify why i'm here and how my agency is involved with the healthy workplaces act which i will refer to going forward as the hwa next we'll spend quite some time getting into the details of this law for those of you who want to have a one bucket pto policy will tell you what you need to do to remain compliant with the hwa we'll then talk a bit about figuring out how much to pay employees when they use paid sick leave we'll then give you some tips and tricks on how to prepare for the july 1st effective date and to conclude i will be joined on screen by a couple of attorneys from the department including katie sartorius and richard branch to answer any of your questions the mission of the department of workforce solutions is to educate empower employ and enforce our vision is to be a leader in improving employment and lowering poverty rates through workforce development enhanced services for employers and ensuring fair labor practices and workforce protections for new mexicans the labor relations division is one part of the demand of the department of workforce solutions the labor relations division administers and enforces state labor laws regulating many things such as payment of wages discrimination employment of my employment of minors public works prevailing wage and now paid sick leave after the bill made it through the new mexico legislature in 2021 governor michelle lujan grisham signed the hwa into law the labor relations division is tasked with its implementation and enforcement it's a process to begin with promulgating regulations when i say rules and regulations or regulations i'm referring to a document drafted and presented for public comment that is designed to give clarity and detail to the act itself if you've seen or read the hwa which we hope that you have by now you know it's short and it's broad in some respects so the regulations are really important in the enforcement process and for you all in being better able to understand your rights and obligations under the hwa the draft version is on our website now and the regulations will be finalized on june 27th so you all are aware individuals can file a complaint against an employer for alleged non-compliance of the act which includes retaliation for three years from the date of the alleged violation these agreed employees can file in the courts directly or they can file with the labor relations division starting on july 1st 2022 the labor relations division will accept complaints online in person or through mailing or faxing the complaint form when we receive a complaint we will conduct a fact-finding investigation that includes gathering evidence from whatever sources are available and asking for position statements from employers in response to the allegations we will arrange a mediation between the parties to try to resolve the case and if it doesn't resolve at that point we will issue an administrative decision if the employer is found liable and refuses to rectify the violation then the labor relations division may bring a lawsuit in civil court against the company on the complaintant's behalf but i hope that you all be so prepared today that your employees employees will not have anything to complain about on july 1st or any time thereafter and before we dive in let me share a positive note with you new mexico is not alone in recognizing that paid sick leave can benefit employees and employers 15 other states and almost 150 countries around the world enacted laws requiring some form of paid sick leave so even when not required by law many businesses nationwide have implemented sick leave policies that give workers paid job-protected time off first doing so reduces turnover and data supports this fact more workforce stability means less advertising interviewing and training new hires which can be costly when employees work sick they are not productive paid sick leave programs help ensure that when workers are present they perform at their best employees who go to work sick put their co-workers and your customers at risk that trickle-down effect can carry a large economic burden for an employer and employees who can take care of themselves and their families will ultimately spend less on health care costs which in turn can decrea decrease costs for employers who offer health plans as well so thank you all again for your attention and for wanting to do your best to comply with this new law it really is good for business okay now let's talk about the important details of the healthy workplaces act some of you have already read the law the regulations or started learning about this was this law elsewhere which is fantastic nonetheless i'm still going to cover some of the big picture requirements for those of you who are using this presentation as your first opportunity to educate yourselves about paid sick leave so here it is in a nutshell the healthy workplaces act requires private employers regardless of size to let all employees earn paid sick leave starting july 1st 2022 at the rate of one hour per 30 hours worked so if your business employs one employee or thousands of employees whether full-time part-time seasonal temporary etc the law will require you to pay sick leave at a minimum of one hour per 30 hours worked the division will not require that employers keep track of fractions of accrual hours so if you have a part-time employee who works 15 hours per week per week excuse me once she works her 30th hour at the end of her second week then she would be granted one hour of paid sick leave so basically however long it takes an employee to get 30 hours of work once they do they earn that hour on the other end of the spectrum many employers will ask the question does sick leave accrual count in overtime hours the answer is yes at the same rate a minimum of one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked so looking at this example together if jared works his regular 40 hour work week plus 20 hours of overtime that's 60 hours of work that week so 60 divided by 30 hours is exactly two hours so jared would have accrued two hours of sick leave in that week the healthy workplaces act is designed for employees performing work in new mexico to accrue paid sick leave whether your business is based in new mexico or out of state your employees performing services in new mexico must accrue paid sick leave one exception is that the hwa does not apply to any work done by employees on tribal land and our division has no authority to to enforce its laws there what is an employee under the healthy workplaces act the exact definition folks is in the statute but here are a few examples individuals performing services in people's home for compensation are covered by the act unless they are sold proprietors independent contractors and subcontractors are not employees under the act but employers should be cautious not to misclassify these workers as contractors to avoid having to comply with the act the act includes penalties for doing so federal and state employees are also not employees under the act corporate officer corporate officers and company owners might be considered employees under the act if they perform services for renumeration meaning pay as set forth in their governing documents such as bylaws operating agreements corporate resolutions etc excuse me it's important that employers know the broad scope of reasons for which an employee can use their accrued sick leave so let's go through this one together for the diagnosis care or treatment of mental or physical illness injury or other health condition for the care of the employee's family members for the same reasons for preventive medical care for the employee or their family members for meetings at the employee's child school or place of care related to the child's health or disability and for absences related to domestic abuse sexual assault or stalking suffered by the employee or their family member so how long can employees be out when using the leave employees can use the sick leave that they've earned all in one chunk or in bits and pieces the law requires you to allow them to use lead in the smallest increments that your payroll system uses to account for other types of absences kim sorry to interrupt we're getting a lot of questions coming in which is wonderful i just want to repeat a couple of things for folks who might have come in late first we're not addressing questions that show up in the chat so please put your questions in the q a section only uh and as you can see richard brand is helping out and giving some written answers to questions as we go along but again if your question disappeared and you didn't get an answer know that it's because we did or we will answer it during the course of the presentation so don't worry about it and no need to uh repeat your questions so thank you again for asking your questions and for your help in us managing the q a since we've got over 600 people on today all right sorry kim thanks no perfect thank you so much thank you for the reminder katie all right moving ahead here um many things in the healthy workplaces act are set but employers will have to choose how they want to structure their paid sick leave policy in some regards first are you going to offer continuous accrual where the employees earn up to one hour leave after they work 30 hours earning one piece of pie at the time or are you going to front load the whole year's worth of leave front loading means that when an employer chooses to grant employees earned sick leave the employee could accrue within the year in one chunk at the beginning of the year so if you front load you will add 64 hours to each employee's balance at the start of the year for employees hired in the middle of the year you would just prorate their portion of the 64 hours when they start work you have to front load 64 or more hours but it can't be less so you can't front load say 32 hours for a part-time employee if you choose to front load 64 hours you still need to monitor hours worked employees must ultimately earn one hour of sick leave per 30 hours worked so if if an employee exceeds 1920 hours of work in a year they need to be accruing hours above the 64 that they were front loaded note also that employers cannot recoup any unused front loaded leave now you can use different accrual structures for different categories of employees but be sure that you keep good records all employees must also accrue paid sick leave at a rate of at least one hour per 30 hours worked regardless of which category they are in the second choice that employers will each have to make is whether they're going to be more generous than the law requires remember the law presents minimums are you going to let employees accrue more paid sick leave than one hours one hour per 30 hours worked are you going to allow employees to carry over more than 64 hours of a new paid sick leave and are you going to allow employees to use more than 64 hours per year if they have it in their balance so you as a business have to decide yes or no to each of these questions you might have already noticed by now that employers cannot cap a cool or stop accruals ever but businesses can cap the number of hours an employee can use so if necessary we suggest you make it clear very clear to your employees that their leave balance may not might not reflect the number of hours that they have available for use to illustrate this for an employee who has 70 hours in their bank at the end of the year you would carry over at least 64 of those if you're front loading that means that say on january 1st that employee might have a balance of 128 hours the 64 hours that rolled over and the 64 hours that you front load even though you will only permit them to use 64 hours in the upcoming year if another employee has a balance of 20 unused hours at the end of the year you would have to carry all of you would have to carry all of those then do your front loading so that the employee would start the year with the balance of 84 hours and the third choice that you're going to have to make is how you're going to measure one year you can go with the straight calendar year january 1st to december 31st you can use any fixed 12-month period such as your fiscal year or a year starting on the specific employees anniversary date with the company you can use the 12-month period measured forward starting on the date a specific employee first used any of their cycling or you can use a rolling 12-month period measured backward from the from the date the name that the employee used any of their urn sick leave and we suggest that you start thinking about these three choices sooner rather than later so that you can be sure to include all of this information in your revised policy and or your employee handbooks under the healthy workplaces act employees keep their sick leave when they are transferred to a different division entity or location a new owner takes the place of the existing employer which is called succession and when the employee is rehired within 12 months of separation in this last case the employee's unused sick leave balance whatever it was when they left it must be restored and i know because you're all going to ask the question employers are not required to pay employees for any banked hours of paid sick leave upon termination resignation retirement or any other reasons for separation from employment but if the employee has the option and chooses to cash out the hours then those hours will be deemed used and not need to be reinstated to an employee who is rehired within 12 months of separation and a few miscellaneous things that you should know about paid sick leave employees cannot be required to use other types of leave before being allowed to use their paid sick leave it is not the employee's responsibility to find a replacement worker if an employee will be out on sick leave and as an employer you cannot condition granting this request for sick leave on whether or not they or you find a replacement worker immigration status is irrelevant is as far as the hwa is concerned and if an employee uses one day or less of sick leave you can't ask for documentation you can an employer can only require reasonable documentation that sick leave was used for a covered purpose if the employee uses two or more consecutive work days of sick leave as a reminder that documentation or any information an employer obtains related to an employee's reasons for taking sick leave it must be treated as confidential you can only disclose that information with the employee's permission or for some other legal purpose such as a labor relations division investigation into an alleged violation retaliation is illegal under the healthy workplaces act and we take it seriously this is worth mentioning today so that we're all 100 clear about what retaliation is and understand that is it is against the law so here's the formula for retaliation the first event the employee does anything that they're allowed to do under the healthy workplaces act for example they ask to take sick leave they file a paid sick leave complaint they mention to co-workers or even on social media they think the company violated the act in some way or they participate in an investigation about an alleged violation the second event the employer then takes an adverse an adverse action against that employee or does anything that can be construed as interference with or deterrence from exercising their paid sick leave rights that is what leads to potential liability this slide lists examples of what that retaliatory behavior could look like now this does not mean that employers can never discipline their employees ing to their own internal policies we're just saying use caution when doing so to make sure that discipline is not being used in a retaliatory manner or to discourage employees from using the sick leave that they have in the future legitimate discipline is one thing retaliation is another and it comes with penalties under the law the single most common question that we're already getting from employers has to do with whether their traditional paid time off pto and sick leave need to be kept separate not necessarily it is possible to have a single pto policy and be compliant with the hwa but doing so is not the right choice for every business if you go this route be sure that your pto policy tracks all the hwas terms and conditions you will not be compliant just because you offer more generous accrual rates for pto to essentially absorb the hwa you must make sure that you offer the same or more generous accrual use and carryover rates employees must be allowed to use the pto for at least all the purposes permitted in the hwa you can't have waiting periods prior to accrual or usage of pto you have to use the hwa's methods for calculating sick leave use you have to comply with the record-keeping requirements of the hwa you have to display the poster you have to inform employees of their rights upon hire and your quarterly year-to-date summaries two employees must list hours worked pto accrued and pto used and use caution your policy or other laws might require you to pay out unused pto upon separation unless you know the employees is requesting leave for a non-hwa purpose you won't be able to deny they're taking sick leave based on business needs similarly you won't be able to require pre-approved leave for use and make sure that your employers i'm sorry make sure that your employees know that that one bank of pto that can be used for any reason means that they will not have paid sick leave available if they have zero hours in their pto balance the law can be confusing and we're all trying to figure this out when this went out together the fact that the law takes effect in the middle of the year for example might leave you wondering how you're supposed to comply until we get to 2023. well starting july 1st 2022 current employees must begin to accrue at least one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked you can do a rolling accrual or you can front load if you choose to front load you have to front load the full 64 hours so each business needs to pick what works best for them now the division understands that the rest of 2022 may involve some growing pains we're looking for good faith compliance and commitment to make things right if an if an inadvertent violation occurs now i anticipate there will be some questions about this as scenarios as these scenarios arise so i want to go into detail on figuring out how many hours an employee is out on sick leave and what to pay them for those sick leave hours if an employee works eight to five monday through friday this is easy right if they take one day of sick leave you pay them for eight hours if they take one hour you pay them their hourly rate but what if an employee's work hours fluctuate day to day or week to week in general you'll use the average number of hours the employee worked during the preceding two weeks so let's look at this example together your employee robert called in sick one day in week three so we look at the prior two weeks first we figure out how many hours he worked in this example 28 plus 32 is 60. next we figure out how many days he would work he worked how many days he worked it looks like he worked 10 days let's find the average number of hours worked per day so 60 hours divided by 10 days equals six hours per day so you would consider him to have used six six hours of his of his current sick leap balance now per diem employees which are employees paid per day or on-call employees may not have a regular schedule at all so what do you do in these scenarios if one of those employees calls in sick you will use the number of hours that they were scheduled to work in that day so if they called in sick missing a six hour shift you'll pay them for six hours how many hours do you have to pay if you don't know how many hours the sick sick employee would have worked meaning where the length of a shift is determined the day of based on the employee's needs so if you hired a replacement employee used the number of hours the replacement employee was there and if you didn't get a replacement look at the last time the employee worked that same shift or performed the same tasks for salary for salaried exempt employees or salaried non-exempt employees who hours fluctuate from week to week you'll convert their annual salary into a weekly salary and you'll divide that amount by the standard by a standard 40 hours if you determine for example that albert's annual salary of 41 600 equates to eight hundred dollars per week you'll divide that by 40 hours his salary therefore breaks down essentially into twenty dollars per hour albert must be paid at least that amount for each hour he uses of his sick leave balance so the caveat here is if you know the if you know the exempt employee customarily works less than 40 hours per week then you must use their standard hours instead of 40. if they typically work more than 40 then still use the 40. for salaried non-exempt employees whose weekly hours do not fluctuate you do the same math but instead of using a standard 40 hours you'll use the number of hours that the employee typically works in a work week that could be 40 but let's say susan only works 30 hours per week her 78 000 salary per year divided by 52 weeks breaks down to 1 500 per week that divided by 30 hours works 30 hours worked tells you that she must be paid at least fifty dollars per hour for her sick leave absences so should businesses keep track of hours worked for salaried non-exempt employees not to be able to figure out how much to pay them but you do need to keep track of their hours so to know how much sick leave the the employee would be accruing or should be accruing for exempt employees you can assume that they work 40 hours per week for accrual purposes unless again you know that they're regularly and customarily unless they unless you know that they regularly and customarily work fewer hours per week in which in which case their leave accrual should be based on their typical work hours please note that recouping and notice requirements of the hwa apply equally to all classifications of employees tipped employees are a little different they must receive minimum wage when using the sick leave that they've earned which minimum wage federal state or local the answer is whichever is greater and we're not talking about the tipped minimum wage we're talking the full minimum wage new mexico state minimum wage is currently 11.50 cents per hour but the city of santa fe's minimum wage is 12.95 per hour if your employees in is in santa fe you need to pay them 12.95 for each hour of earned sick leave that they use employees who are paid per task per piece or per project basis must receive the greater of their hourly rate their salary rate converted to an hourly rate or minimum wage commission employees who also have an hourly or salary rate should be paid ing to that which must be at least the applicable minimum wage if they are commission only employees then they must receive at least minimum wage i also wanted to mention today that an employer cannot deem an employee's hours to be cut to a lower number due to taking earned sick leave an employer must pay the employee all earned sick leave used ing to the employee's regularly scheduled hours meaning if the employee normally works 10 hour shifts and they use one day of sick leave they'll be using 10 hours of their sick leave balance and you must pay them for 10 hours not eight hours and i know you might be thinking okay that is a lot of information where do i go from here luckily we can answer that question here for you here are four things that you can and should do now so that you're ready come july 1st prepare notice documents to give to all employees this is the information that you're required to give all all new hires going forward and we strongly recommend you give it to all of your current employees as well pick up posters from the new mexico department of workforce solutions these posters will be available for you to pick up in hard copy by the end of june at all workforce connections offices around the state you can find the one that's closest to you by going to the website address just posted we just posted this address in the chat the posters will be free they'll be available in english spanish navajo and in vietnamese but you should go online now and download the poster in english and spanish before you forget so that you ensure that you'll be in compliance with the law on july 1st next discuss the hwa with your accountant or payroll company and decide on a plan that incorporates your policy changes and properly notifies employees of their year-to-date accrual and usage next draft or revise your policies and your employee handbooks to reflect the provisions of the new law you can go to our website when you're working on these revisions and there we have a list that you can use as a starting point to ensure that your current and future policies comply with the law and i just wanted to mention here that collective bargaining agreement requirements related to paid sick leave must be consistent with the act and they must meet mandatory minimums but a cba a collective bargaining agreement can grant more generous amounts of leave approval use and carry over than required by the act and for those of you out there who love school here's how to earn some extra bonus points find the healthy workplaces act and the regulations and read them they have more information than we can cover in this short in this short time so if you're left with lingering questions after today that's where you should start copies of both are accessible on the website and i'll show you that website address in just a few minutes after this coming july 1st you can't just forget about the hwa and happily carry on with life the law and the regulations do require employers to do things to do a few things continuously employers must provide written or electronic notice on paid sick leave to all employees when they're hired the notice must include very specific information so find that list in the text of the law itself and here's a tip a copy of the poster can be used to satisfy this notice requirement second employers must display the paid sickly poster in english spanish and in any language that is the first language spoken by at least 10 percent of the employer's workforce third employers must provide employees with an accurate year-to-date written summary of earned sick leave accrued and used at least once every calendar quarter so yes if all of the required information is on their pay stubs then you're good to go and finally employees excuse me and finally employers must retain records with all of that good paid sick leave information hours worked sick leave earned and sickly used for at least 48 months from the date the record was created now we realize that shouldn't be too burdensome because you're already required to retain pay records for unemployment insurance so this is not new you just have to make sure that those records now include all the paid sick leave information it's important here um it's important to be reminded that businesses can be liable for monetary damages interest and fees if they violate this law not to mention your time potential attorney fees court costs et cetera et cetera and these complaints are public record so it could affect your business reputation or even whether someone will want to work for you in the future our message is intended to be clear and helpful please do not break the law it is not worth it i encourage you to keep an eye out on our website our website is a one-stop shop for everything related to new mexico paid sick leave please write down this url bookmark it on your computer browsers we will be adding to it and updating it regularly leading up to july 1st and like katie said in the beginning the recording of this presentation should be up next week after we record a version that incorporates a lot of employer facts faqs we'll also be reformatting the slides to include more information to address the faqs so a document with all that information from the slides will be available next week as well and we really appreciate your patience on on that information employees will be able to go to the website to file complaints starting july 1st but you can go there now you can download the poster and read the faqs there are multiple pages of faqs on the website on our website so please be sure to scroll through them all there's a lot of information there please also refer your colleagues and other business owners to our website and to this presentation we feel that we're all better off if we're all on the same page and last but not least thank you again for your time and for your attention um and we'll go now to the q a period i'm joined here by katie sartorius and richard branch labor attorneys in the department thank you all so much hi okay so just a reminder please don't put your questions in the chat we're not looking at them to keep them in the q a uh we got a lot of questions we have a very active audience of over 600 folks today and there's definitely more questions than we can cover even though richard's been typing away answers like a theme there are already a ton in that um and again anything that we get today question wise that's not answered during the presentation or in our faqs online already we will read after today and we are continually adding new faqs to our website based on the questions that we actually get frequently so if we don't answer your question today not to fret again most answers to what you need to know are already going to be in the statute or the regulations or on one of our other resources and this recording and the information from the slides will be posted by the end of next week to our website as well if your question is really specific to you as an employer we probably also won't address it in this bigger audience so we do con suggest that you just read everything you can uh and if you still don't know what to do consult a lawyer that's the best path um for you because we can't give legal advice in the department okay i don't think i have anything else to say this law is new and we're it's changing what business as usual looks like for a lot of folks we're trying to figure this out just as much as you so we're gonna do our best to answer your questions uh let's see how many of these we can get to in the last 15 minutes um richard if i could start by throwing you a question because i think that this is important that folks know um sarah asked a question about if people take sick leave under this employer's current policy and they don't give notice under their current point-based attendance policy that would um they they would get points for that but is that practice now going to be illegal under the hwa um it might uh the act specifically says that uh leave taken pursuant to the act cannot be used for disciplinary uh purposes and um so if if that means accruing points uh for the against the you know under the policy for attendance then um yes that would be sort of affected that way so you're going to have to reconcile those things and make sure that any absence occasion under healthy workplaces act is is excluded from your tabulation of of uh points under your leave policies or absenteeism policies another question just to clarify for salary exempt employees if they're out on sick late leave do employees have to pay them their regular salary plus additional pay for being out on sick leave so normally uh under uh the federal fair labor standards act salaried exempt employees uh may be docked for pays for days that they are absent due to illness unless there is a sick policy under you know their deployment agreement but if there is any type of bar to somebody who's salary exempt being paid for days if they are absent due to a healthy workplaces reason uh then um that goes away the employer must pay them in ance with the act so if they have a crude leave and they have it available when they mess then they have to be paid their regular salary for that time okay uh do employers need to have the one pocket policy need to call it anything specific can they still call it vacation time do they have to call it pto they may call it whatever they like uh as long as the leave is available for healthy workplaces act purposes keep in mind however if a complaint is filed with the division uh the division needs to be able to track uh that time that was accrued used and possibly carried over so it would behoove an employer to let us know when we request records and they provide them what nomenclature they're using to designate healthy workplaces at qualifying leave all right a similar question here and i'm going to take a stab at that if you have the one pto system and you don't have restrictions about what people can use that leave for with the one bucket system uh do you have to ask people why they're taking leave so that you know when it's healthy workplaces act leave um and the answer is no uh not if you're not planning on asking for documentation otherwise you know somebody takes two days or more you are entitled to ask for reasonable documentation uh but otherwise no we like richard said we will just be required that you report hours worked pto used and pto accrued correct i was answering that instead of reading more questions so what if he wants to pull one off of this long long list um yeah there were a lot of questions am i correct that this act does not apply to city government employees that's from alicia the actress applied to city government employees right you are correct it only applies to private employers the state and political subdivisions fall under different provisions some under federal law and their own a lot of them are unionized so there's uh collective bargaining agreements that apply in those situations but uh this healthy workplaces act specifically applies to private employers here's another one from bailey um what does it mean rehired within 12 months is it based on the set employer calendar year or is it 12 months from the date of separation and it's from the date of separation the answer to the question is it's based on the date of separation yes i agree i'm reading all these somebody asked to explain front loading for part time again so just to be clear you can front load for whichever employees you want to but it has to be 64 hours or more front loading is a minimum requirement of 64 hours so you can front load part-time employees but not with fewer than 64 hours long questions guys i noticed a lot of questions about front loading of course but also out of state employers that maybe have employees crossed the line into new mexico to perform some services and the the answer that i sort of have to give for all of those types of situations out of state employers employees in new mexico is it depends uh to a large part on how significant that out of state employers contacts and activities in new mexico are such that we would say they are subject to our jurisdiction some won't be however some will be and it will be on a case-by-case basis when somebody files complaints that we make that determination right there's a lot of questions too about salary exempt and i would recommend we don't have time to go back into the the presentation on that but please look at the faqs that we have on our website um explaining hours um and pay for salary exempt and salary non-exempt employees correct okay so uh to be clear yes a lot of you have picked up on the fact that you can't cap how many hours someone accrues but you can cap their use at 64. so you can front load 64. you can front load 80 and still cap them at 64 use however you want to do that if we have a prn um an as needed employee are they eligible for sick leave yes they are um that would be i think uh what they're referring to there as a per diem employee um and as an as needed employee they are eligible for um for paid sick leave and and kim uh you know we do get that there's some inherent uh issues with regard to prn uh that would make one question why does this act apply to them however uh on that is the act as it is written and uh we see no indication that there was an intention by the legislature to exclude them maybe that is you know something for the future but we have to apply the act that we have not one that we you know sort of um think should have been passed or would make it easier to administer et cetera et cetera right exactly um here's another one um can cba union employees or their union representatives for future cba agreements waive their rights to this through mousse that's a really good question no um employees cannot waive their rights uh for paid sick leave under the act it is a requirement for all uh for all employees who work for private businesses yeah we deem that acts and and rights under acts such as this to be non-waivable uh and and you know so that that's what's affecting it uh to be clear i think you probably only have if you're an out of state company or only have some employees in new mexico and others out of state i i wouldn't recommend you give notice about new mexico sick leave lost to your employees to whom it does not apply that might confuse them does the department have notice documents for employers to provide to employees yes you can find all of that information on our website the posters are available to be to be downloaded and hard copies will be available for pickup at any workforce connections office and we have several workforce connections offices throughout the state but for now go to the website and download the poster that's that's the the best word the best place to start right now to address the issue of if uh of how many hours or days how long an employee's out on sick leave remember that they need to be allowed to take sick leave in the minimum increment that your payroll system allows so they can take just 15 minutes or they can take three days and one chunk so that employee should be the one informing you how long they're out using their leave um katie i just posted a a link to our website that has the posters and i wanted to also uh and this may have already been covered in some of the q a uh giving the employees a copy of the information on the poster will comply with the notice requirements that employers are supposed to give to their employees you probably said that already that's all right there's a this is a very like i said at the beginning a very dense presentation especially if folks are trying to pay attention to the q a and and pay attention so we will post these materials um but yes it's it's worth repeating a lot of this even if yes again uh it applies to seasonal employees temporary employees full-time part-time pretty much all employees the same to everyone um i just want to say thank you to hugo hernandez who said great job katie richard and kimberly i feel more informed and feel like i had all of my initial questions answered we're so happy to hear that hugo thank you um diana has a question i have two employees that are commit that are commission based only their hours every day are different four to eight hours or less how do i figure out their sick leave pay richard you want to tackle that one um yes i believe that uh we have a provision of our act that specifies that um if the shifts are preset and they call you if they're scheduled to work six hours and they call in sick for that day then that's a pretty clear you pay them six hours minimum wage if they're good minimum wage yes that's correct um but if their hours differ then in that case the employer would need to look at the former two weeks correct would you katie and richard agree with me look at the the prior two weeks to find the average number of hours and then use those hours uh to pay for the sick leave correct oh my gosh all right you know what we have 140 unanswered questions which is way more than we can get to and it seems like it's taking us a really long time to read them so again i'll just repeat and then we can we can wrap up here um look online read the faqs we've got almost 50 of them on there and they are all pulled from the questions we've been getting most frequently from employers so that should answer a lot of your questions uh read the statute read the regulations and then get in touch with us if you still can't find it uh and again you can look at the recording of this presentation and access the material from the slides by the end of next week by going to our website so i think we should wrap up two minutes early because i know the three of us have to be in another one thank you all so much for attending and for your patience with us as we all figure this out together very good thank you all