REMINDER: Minimum Wage Increases on Friday, March 29, 2019
Please adjust any minimum wage employees you have on the payroll from the current $9.25 per hour to $9.45 per hour effective Friday, March 29, 2019.
State of Michigan Now Requires Paid Sick Leave
Effective Friday, March 29, 2019, Michigan’s new state law requiring paid sick leave goes into effect. How does this new law affect our parishes and schools? The law requires employers who have 50 or more employees on their payroll to provide employees who work at least 30 hours per week an opportunity to accrue paid sick leave at the rate of at least one hour of leave for every 35 hours worked, for up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per benefit year. If you have a sick leave or paid time off (PTO) policy at your parish or school that provides at least 40 hours of paid leave per year that can be used for sick leave for employees who work at least 35 hours per week, you are in compliance with the law.
Our diocesan paid time off policy, which has been in effect since 2012, states the following:
Sick leave is calculated and recorded on a fiscal-year basis. A full-time employee is credited with thirteen days of paid sick leave on the first day of each fiscal year. Employees scheduled to work less than 30 hours per week are not eligible for paid sick leave. An employee hired on a date other than the first day of the fiscal year receives a prorated share of the first year’s sick leave. Unused sick leave can be carried over from year to year, but only until forty days have been accumulated.
A full-time school teacher is credited with ten sick days per school year. Unused sick leave can be accumulated to a maximum balance of forty days, and may be transported from one educational position within this Diocese to another. In addition to sick leave, a school teacher can use two days of leave during each school year for personal business. These personal-leave days do not accumulate from one school year to the next. A school teacher is not paid for unused sick- or personal-leave days. A school teacher who works less than full-time is credited with sick-and personal-leave days at a proportionately reduced rate that reflects the number of regularly scheduled hours. In addition to teachers, this paragraph also applies to other school personnel who are off work during the summer and other times when the teachers are off work.
I have provided a sample template for parish and school policies.