Last week, the Duluth Taskforce charged with making a city-based sick and safe leave recommendation released its 10-page report. The report included a mandatory sick and safe leave recommendation similar to policies passed in Minneapolis and St. Paul, along with a secondary recommendation leaving more discretion to individual employers.
From the recommendation document:
"All employers with a physical location in the City of Duluth with five or more employees covered.
Cover all full time and part time employees (including casual, paid interns, domestic workers,
temporary workers, etc.).
Earned sick and safe time should be available for employees to use for themselves, spouses,
children (including adult children), siblings, mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, grandparents,
grandchildren and step-parents. This follows existing state law. Minn. Stat. 181. 9413(a.)
Complaint-based enforcement and a private right of action.
City Council to determine what entity to enforce the ordinance.
No additional documentation for leave beyond what may be required by existing state and federal
law.
Employers who already provide substantially similar earned sick and safe time would be exempt
from compliance with the ordinance. The definition of "substantially similar" will need to be
determined by the City Attorney.
Any ordinance would not go into effect for a period of 18 months, allowing employers time to
update their policies and systems."
"The Task Force recommends that the City Council pass an ordinance requiring employers to create
a full earned sick and safe time policy with the following details in addition to the shared provisions above:
The majority of Task Force members recommend that workers start to earn leave upon hire and can use ESST either immediately upon earning or 30 days after hire.
Earned sick and safe time would be earned at a rate of at least one hour for every 30 hours
worked.
While the majority of the Task Force thought that there should be some way for employees to
rollover unused ESST to the following year, there was no consensus on how much the rollover
should be or whether additional time could be banked beyond a one-time rollover. Also, there
was no consensus in whether there should be a cap on how much ESST an employee could use in
a year if they rollover additional leave (e.g. if an employee has 80 hours available due to rollover
is there a limit on how much ESST can be used in a year?)."
"Some Task Force members sought to create a second option from a full policy. The concept was
to create an ordinance that mandates a basic policy leaving more to the discretion of the employer. The mandated policy would include the shared items noted above, as well as the following:
Employer would be required to have a written policy publicly available providing that employees can earn sick and safe leave of at least three days annually for full time employees, pro-rated for part time employees."
Connors will discuss the unique trade and cultural relationship between Minnesota and Canada, and explain how Minnesota businesses can tap in to the Canadian marketplace.
