Compliance News and Updates: May 2022 Artwork

Lincoln Absence Advisor

Welcome to the Lincoln Absence Advisor podcast! As the disability and leave landscape continues to expand and evolve, we’ll help you keep up and keep informed. Our podcasts take a deep dive into important topics such as the evolution of the FMLA and ADA, state regulations, the compliance challenge, and the complexities of day-to-day administration. In this podcast, our Lincoln benefit professionals provide thoughtful and vigorous conversations that tackle the important leave topics employers need to understand.

All Episodes

Lincoln Absence Advisor

Compliance News and Updates: May 2022

May 24, 2022 • Lincoln Financial Group • Season 3 • Episode 51

What’s happening across the country in leave and absence management? This episode of Lincoln Absence Advisor discusses the key leave developments from this month’s compliance report. Our top stories include new legislation, including Delaware’s paid family and medical leave, Alabama’s Adoption Promotion Act, and additional leave programs for government employees in the District of Columbia and Houston, Texas. We also discuss draft rules of posting requirements for the New Jersey Family Leave Act.

Resources mentioned: April Compliance Report | Compliance Report Archive on the Lincoln Absence Advisor hub

Karen Batson: 0:00

Hi everyone, this is Karen Batson Marketing Manager at Lincoln Financial Group. And we are back with our third compliance news and update where we're going to talk about the top stories from May. Bryan, my producer is joining me to keep me on track so we could so we can make this a short episode Bryan, we're gonna make this it is not going to be as long as April's officially

Bryan Olivier: 0:25

Short and sweet,

Karen Batson: 0:26

Short and sweet. We're gonna get to these top stories just so you have a little bit of info to get you started and know what's in our compliance report. reminder for all we do these compliance reports monthly, we send them out via email. So reach out to your LinkedIn benefits professional if you don't receive that. We also post them on our website. And now we host these short podcast episodes on the top stories. So without further ado, let's just jump right in.

Bryan Olivier: 0:56

Want to jump in?

Karen Batson: 0:57

Yeah, I do.

Bryan Olivier: 0:58

So I guess the first story or update comes from Alabama. Governor Ivey signed the Adoption Promotion Act, which allows state employees to use donated leave time for adoption related reasons and requires employers subject to federal FMLA to also provide birth and bonding leave to eligible employees. So what more can you tell us about the change in Alabama.

Karen Batson: 1:18

So first of all, the new leave takes effect July 1, 2022, and it is unpaid, which will work concurrently with FMLA. This provides 12 weeks of leave which can be used for the birth and care of a newborn child during the child's first year from birth or for adoption during the first year of the child's placement with the employee. As you've mentioned in the intro, if the employee is eligible for FMLA and works in Alabama, they're eligible for this leave. As a reminder, that means 12 months of service 1,250 hours worked in the last 12 months with the employer and they work at a location with 50 employees in a 75 mile radius. In the same vein, employers subject to federal FMLA are required to provide this leave to eligible employees. Such covered employers include those that employ 50 or more employees each work day during 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year. Another point to note with this is that employers that provide paid leave for the birth of a child must also provide the lesser of either equivalent paid leave or two weeks paid leave for adoption reasons. Such paid leave for adoption only has to be provided to one of the eligible employees if both parents are employed by the same company. The last thing I would point out is in regards to the donated time, the maximum amount of donated annual sick or compensatory leave a state employee can use for adoption is up to two weeks per adoption. Please note, this is just a new leave reason under the already existing donated leave program that is available to state

Bryan Olivier: 2:48

So lots to digest there. Folks can read in the in employees. the report, if they want to get their arms around that those details a little bit more.

Karen Batson: 2:56

We put it in writing and we put it in the compliance report.

Bryan Olivier: 2:58

Okay, so moving on, let's, let's talk a little bit about what happened in New Jersey. The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights or DCR published draft rules for the posting requirements pursuant to the New Jersey Family Leave Act to consider work from home or remote employees, among others. So new posting requirements, is it really as simple as that? Or?

Karen Batson: 3:19

Well, I think you have to look at it as we all know more and more employees are working remote. In fact, we receive various questions on the remote workforce in things like our webinar, and we have various questions, but sometimes the question is about okay, I have this requirement. How do I do that with a remote workforce. So with this proposed amendment, employers can use their internal website or their intranet site to satisfy the requirement of the division of civil rights official employment and New Jersey Family Leave Act poster visibility. Another part of the proposed amendment is that covered employers would also need to provide written copies of these things to employees once a year. There's a bit more information on the New Jersey division of civil rights website. But we and we have that linked in the report for anyone to reference when they're ready.

Bryan Olivier: 4:07

Next, we've got some updates on some new leave programs or additional leave programs from the District of Columbia and the city of Houston, Texas. So the city of Houston announced new paid parental leave for pre and post natal care. So how much do we know about that? What's going on there.

Karen Batson: 4:24

So this new paid parental leave program took effect May 14 of this year, and it offers for the pre and postnatal care as you mentioned, the new policy will provide up to 12 weeks of leave to new parents who work for the city and have at least six months of continuous employment with the city. The leave policy provides 320 hours of leave which is broken down to allow up to 160 hours of prenatal appointments and 40 hours of infant wellness leave for the first year. And then the remaining entitlement for bonding post delivery. The 320 hours will expand to 420, starting September 1, 2023, we included a link to the press release in this month's report. If you want to read more even watch the video of Mayor Turner citing the ordinance.

Bryan Olivier: 5:12

Great. So let's, let's move along and let's get back over to the east coast and look at DC where Mayor Bowser signed temporary legislation that provides district government employees bereavement leave when the employee suffers a stillbirth at 20 weeks gestation, or later when a child under 21 years old passes away. So what can you tell us about this new legislation.

Karen Batson: 5:35

So there's not as much to share for this. This leave started February 17, and will end November 19, 2022, unless it gets extended at some point. We should mention that child for this leave is defined as biological adoptive or stepchildren of the employees. It provides up to 10 days without the loss of pay leave and service credit for district government employees. And this lead must be taken within 60 days of the child's passing.

Bryan Olivier: 6:03

All right, so we'll wrap up with some big news. Another new state, the Delaware governor signed some legislation on May 10. You want to talk about what happened there.

Karen Batson: 6:15

So in April's report, you know, we did a whole write up and on the podcast episode a talk through of Maryland passing paid family medical leave. And this month, we have official word that Delaware has passed paid family and medical leave. So I am going to actually note that I'm not going to go through all of the information on this podcast episode. So with all of the new programs and additional information around Colorado and Oregon kind of everything going on, we're going to dedicate some podcast episodes to these new programs in June. I'm going to save that information for that episode. So you can hear from our product and legal experts about what they know on the program. And we can kind of take a deeper dive into it. But we do have a write up of everything we know so far in the compliance report. So definitely check that out if you're looking for particular answers. A few tidbits I'll leave you with though is that contributions will begin January 1, 2025. And then benefits will be payable January 1, 2026. And leave reasons that this program will cover is parental leave may be taken to care for a child within the first year after birth, adoption or placement. Medical Leave may be taken to attend to cover individual's own serious health condition. And family caregiving leave may be taken to care for a family member with a serious health condition or to attend to a qualifying military exigency. So there's similar leave reasons we've seen in other programs.

Bryan Olivier: 7:51

Okay, stay tuned for more then.

Karen Batson: 7:53

Yes, we'll, we'll be sharing a lot more info as we can.

Bryan Olivier: 7:57

All right. And that sort of wraps up that's a quick update. So anything else you want to share like details about the compliance report itself?

Karen Batson: 8:04

Well, I know we've we've kind of inserted that into this very short episode a few times. But we will link to our Lincoln absence advisor hub in the show notes. So you can look at any previous reports as well as check out other podcast episodes, and our webinar series. There's a lot of good information on that hub. And as a reminder, if you are looking to get on our distribution list for the report, reach out to Lincoln benefits professional. And they can get you signed up so that you're one of the first people to not only get the report, but to know that this podcast episode is out. I do want to actually mention our next podcast episode because we actually just finished having a conversation with our guests. Early June, we'll be releasing an episode on paternity leave. We've invited a few dads onto the episode who all have different experiences with paternity leave, and we just talk about what they went through what resources were beneficial, how they learned about paternity leave, how information might be different before and after all sorts of different aspects about it. So it should be a really good episode and I hope you guys all listen. Then of course, if you enjoy the podcast series, even if it's just one episode you've listened to, please let us know by sharing an episode rating us or following us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disclosures: 9:33

The information contained in this podcast is for general use and is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney or your human resource professional. Lincoln Financial Group is the marketing name for Lincoln National Corporation and its affiliates affiliates are separately responsible for their own financial and contractual obligations.