Milwaukee Sick Pay - The Details

Now that the Milwaukee Sick Pay Referendum has passed, it's important for businesses located within the City to be familiar with the provisions of this new mandate.

How is Sick pay Accrued?
Employees will earn one hour of sick pay for every 30 hours that they work and can accrue up to 72 hours of leave which translates into 9 days of leave. If you are an employee of a business than has less than 10 workers you will only be allowed to accrue up to 40 hours of sick pay.

What defines being sick?
Employees will be allowed to utilize their sick pay if they are sick, if a family member is sick or if you want to receieve "preventative care". All definitions are very broad such as what constitutes preventative care. Family member is also very loosely defined and can include friends. At the end of the day the employee can take off for any reason they deem necessary. The law is that broadly defined.

Other Provisions
Employees will be able to start taking sick pay once they are employed for 90 days. Sick pay will roll over from year to year, but employees will be limited to taking the annual maximum accrual of days.

Employers
Employers cannot require unreasonable documentation if an employee takes a sick day for their own benefit and the employer cannot require documentation if the employee takes off for a family member.

As the language is the ordinance is vague, most attorneys I have talked to believe that it is in the employers interest not to challenge an employees use of the sick time.

Employers will now have to review their compensation and benefit structure in order to add this mandate. I would suspect that they will simply grant paid time off rather than vacation days.

It will be interesting to see what employers who have multiple locations do with this. If you give 9 days of sick pay to your employees in Milwaukee can you get away with not doing the same for employees who might be in a suburb?