Paid leave on the Nebraska ballot

Like Missouri, Nebraska’s November ballot will allow voters to decide whether the state should enact a statute known as the Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplaces Act.

The law would give eligible employees the right to earn paid sick time for personal or family health needs as follows:

• Employers with fewer than 20 employees would need to allow employees to accrue and use up to 40 hours of such time each year.
• Employers with 20 or more employees would need to allow employees to accrue and use up to 56 hours of such time each year.

Employees would begin to accrue paid leave upon hire or October 1, 2025, whichever is later. They could use it as soon as it’s accrued.

Instead of allowing employees to accrue the leave, employers could frontload it. Employees would carry over accrued leave to the following year or employers could pay it out at the end of the year.

If the law passes, employees would be entitled to take the leave for the following reasons:

• Their own mental or physical condition or preventive care;
• To care for a family member with a mental or physical condition or preventive care;
• To attend a meeting necessitated by the employee’s child's condition at school or place of care;
• Closure of the employee's workplace due to a public health emergency;
• To care for a child whose school or place of care has been closed due to a public health emergency; or
• The employee needs to self-isolate or care for a family member to avoid communicating a disease.

Regardless of age, family members include:

• Children,
• Parents,
• Legal guardians,
• Spouses,
• Grandparents,
• Grandchildren,
• Siblings, or
• Any other individual related by blood to the employee or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.

Employers could require employees to provide notice and reasonable documentation if the leave is for more than three consecutive workdays.

Employees could take leave by the hour or the smallest increment of the employer’s payroll system.

Employers could not retaliate against employees for exercising their rights.

Employers that already provide leave that meets the requirements would not need to provide more leave.

Key to remember: Yet another state might be joining the paid leave bandwagon through the use of the November ballot; this time it’s Nebraska.