Human Resource Blog

sick time

We are a small company- less than 20 employees- in Springfield, Massachusetts. I am writing a employee handbook and have a question about sick time. The owner does not want to give any to the employees. Must he, by law, give any sick days to both part time and full time employees. Thanks very much!

There is currently no federal or Massachusetts law that requires an employer to give paid sick leave to hourly workers. (Such a law has been considered at the federal level several times.) The employer can legally just pay workers for the time they work.

Be aware that under the state family leave law, the employer must provide 8 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child.

However, the employer may want to offer paid sick leave, at least to exempt employees. Under the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act, if the company has no bona fide paid sick leave program, an exempt employee who misses one or more days of work due to illness is always entitled to his or her full salary for the week. (If the employer has a bona fide paid sick leave program, and the exempt employee exceeds it, the employee need not be paid when he or she misses a full day of work due to illness.)

If the employer offered 3 paid sick days per year to exempt employees, then the exempt employee who missed 4 or more days per year due to illness would not be entitled to payment for the additional days. Ironically, by not providing any sick days, the employer must pay exempt employees for all sick days.

This answer would be different in several locations outside of Massachusetts, including the District of Columbia.