What family members can workers use leave to care for?įor the purposes of Minnesota’s law, a family member will include a worker’s spouse or domestic partner, child, parent, sibling, grandchild, or grandparent, as well as many relationships by marriage. Workers who need leave from both categories can take up to 20 weeks total in a benefit year. Workers can receive up to 12 weeks of leave in each of the two categories per benefit year. The legislation breaks benefits into two categories: 1) medical leave, including for pregnancy or recovery from childbirth, and 2) all other kinds of leave, that is parental leave, safety leave, caregiving leave, and deployment-related leave. In other words, workers keep their eligibility for the monetary benefits, even as they change employers, and could be eligible for monetary benefits as soon as they start with an employer if they were previously eligible. This means that someone who recently changed jobs could count income from their past job as well as their current job, while someone with two jobs could count income from both. Based on the current state average annual wage, workers would need to have earned about $3,500 in the base period to qualify.īenefits are portable, meaning that income earned across all covered Minnesota employers in the base period counts toward the total. To be eligible, workers will need to have earned at least 5.3 percent of the state average annual wage in total over the base period-a designated 12-month period prior to the start of leave. Deployment-related leave to deal with the impact of a loved one’s military deployment.Safety leave for certain needs when workers or their loved ones experience sexual or domestic violence.Parental leave to provide workers the time to bond with a new child. Caregiving leave to allow workers to care for a loved one with a serious health condition.Medical leave to address workers’ own serious health conditions, including pregnancy.What kinds of leave does the law provide? Self-employed people will be able to voluntarily opt in to coverage. It will cover employees regardless of employer size and include both full-time and part-time workers, with a limited exception excluding certain seasonal workers from coverage. The law will cover nearly all employees in Minnesota, including both private sector and state and local government employees. Minnesota’s law will guarantee workers in the state the right to paid family and medical leave when they cannot work due to serious health or caregiving needs. Workers and employers will begin contributing to the program on that same date. Workers will be able to begin taking leave and receiving benefits on January 1, 2026. Here are the key facts about the legislation. Minnesota will be the first state in the Midwest to enact a paid leave law, joining 11 other states and Washington, D.C., with paid leave laws on the books as the fight for paid leave continues at the federal level. Some states have additional unpaid time off protections that go beyond the federal FMLA.This week, the Minnesota Legislature passed a paid family and medical leave law, which is currently awaiting the signature of Gov. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a federal law that guarantees job-protected, unpaid time off to eligible workers for qualifying reasons, such as bonding with a new child, recovering from one’s own serious illness or caring for a seriously ill loved one. Unpaid time off does not provide compensation, but typically includes job protection and continuation of workplace benefits such as health insurance. There are no federal laws regarding paid time off, and few state or local laws related to this policy. Often paid time off is offered in place of separate leave policies for vacation, sick time, personal days, and other forms of paid leave intended for specific purposes. Paid time off (often referred to as “PTO”) policies provide paid leave that can be used for a wide range of different uses including emergencies, illnesses, sudden necessities, planned vacations, etc. There is currently no federal law guaranteeing access to paid sick leave, although many states and localities have passed paid sick leave laws. Paid sick time refers to policies that provide regular wages when workers need to take shorter leaves due to their own or a family member’s routine illness like a cold or the flu, or to access medical care – including preventative care – for themselves or a family member. There is currently no federal law regarding paid family and medical leave for the private sector, although some states have their own programs and requirements. Paid family and medical leave refers to policies that enable workers to receive compensation when they take extended time off work for qualifying reasons, such as bonding with a new child, recovering from one’s own serious illness or caring for a seriously ill loved one.
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