Cook County Adopts Sick Leave Ordinance
From Ancel Glink’s labor and
employment blog, The Workplace Report: Cook County Hops on the Paid Sick Leave Train
In January of this year, we
identified what we thought would be the five hottest labor and employment
topics in 2016. The topics included the change in the DOL overtime rules,
naturally; transgender rights, obviously; and paid sick leave. Last week the
County of Cook joined the City of Chicago and a number of other local
governmental bodies in passing an ordinance mandating paid sick leave to
employees who work in the County.
Similar to the ordinance
mandating sick leave recently enacted by the City of Chicago, employees in Cook
County are entitled to accrue up to 40 hours of sick leave each year and carry
over up to half of that time into the next year according to a recent ordinance adopted by the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
Employers that are covered by the
ordinance include individuals and companies with a place of business within the
County that gainfully employ at least one covered employee. Government entities
and Indian tribes are not covered employers under the ordinance.
Workers are entitled to benefits
under the Ordinance if they:
1. perform at least two hours of
work for a covered employer while physically present within the geographic
boundaries of the County in any particular two-week period; and
2. work at least 80 hours for a
covered employer in any 120-day period.
Interestingly, the ordinance
states that compensated time spent traveling in Cook County, including for
deliveries and sales calls and for travel related to other business activity
taking place in the County, can count toward the two-hour requirement except that
certain railroad employees are not covered by the ordinance. So, a business that is located outside of
Cook County, but does business inside of the County and sends its employees
into the County, will be covered by the ordinance.
While government entities are
exempt under the ordinance, it appears that those entities can also pass their
own ordinances exempting employers in their boundaries from coverage under the
County ordinance. A number of municipalities in the County have already
expressed their intent to take that action although the ordinance does not take
effect until July 2017.
In addition to municipalities "opting out" of the ordinance’s coverage, a question exists as to the overall
legality of the ordinance itself. Apparently prior to adopting the ordinance,
the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (which serves as the lawyer to the
County Board of Commissioners) provided certain commissioners on the County Board with an opinion that it did not
have the authority to enact or enforce the ordinance. That opinion has been the subject of at least one recent news story about the policy previously established by Cook County Commissioners on obtaining legal opinions from the State's Attorney.
While employers in the County who
already provide at least 40 hours of paid sick leave or PTO time to their
employees remain unaffected by the ordinance, other employers should stay tuned
to see how this ordinance plays out.
Post Originally Authored by
Margaret Kostopulos, Ancel Glink
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