In addition to Michigan, 15 other states and Washington DC have enacted worker exemption laws. The most recent include Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota.
In addition to the 72 hours of paid sick leave for employees of larger companies, companies with fewer than 10 employees must now provide up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year.
The rules:
- Allow workers to sue if their rights are denied
- Abolition of the documentation requirement for absences of more than three days
- Mandatory sick leave of 1 hour per 30 working hours
- End “early” sick days, for example at the beginning of a year
The new law is “so complicated and has such dramatic implications that employers are desperate for some kind of relief,” said Rob Boonin, a labor and employment attorney in Ann Arbor.
Calley agreed, but said some details of the law were burdensome, including the strict accounting of accrued hours and the lack of notice to employers about taking time off.
“It could have been so easy,” he said, adding, “It’s as if they asked, ‘How can we make it as difficult as possible to grant sick leave?'”
James Berg, managing partner of the 180-employee Essence Restaurant Group in Grand Rapids, offers paid sick leave but said implementing the new policy will cost an additional $20,000 a year.
For a small company with a profit margin of five percent, that’s a significant amount, he said.
So far, Berg said, he is considering outsourcing human resources functions and also consulting an employment lawyer to prepare his company for compliance.
Flexibility has now become a tool to attract jobs, and the new rules appear to drag employers who violate those regulations into the “micromanagement” of the law, Dave Worthams, director of employment policy for the Michigan Manufacturers Association, told Bridge.
Vacation and sick days need to be separated, and even the most generous programs that follow the motto “take sick days when you need them” still only work with a credit system, experts say.
“They might actually reduce vacation entitlement to make sure they have enough sick leave hours,” Worthams said. “And I think when that comes out, a lot of employees are going to be wondering, ‘What the heck just happened?'”
Employees
Federal data shows that 78% of private sector workers have paid sick leave, according to a 2024 study by the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute based in Washington, D.C. That’s a 1 percentage point increase from the previous year.
2018 estimates suggest that up to a third of Michigan workers work in a job without paid sick leave.
Among workers who are not eligible for paid sick leave, most are part-time workers, who are among the lowest-paid workers in the restaurant industry, advocates say.
Jared Make, vice president of the advocacy group A Better Balance, said the new rules most impact “low-wage workers and workers of color, who are most likely to be eligible for paid sick leave.”
Companies could also benefit from this measure, Make added, as productivity would remain stable and there would be fewer illnesses in the workplace.
Wells, the deputy director of the group Mothering Justice, said she once worked in retail and couldn’t afford to stay home when she was sick.
The new rules “finally take into account the fact that people get sick, that people have children and elderly family members, and that people therefore don’t have to choose between those two things,” she said.
What happens next?
With the Legislature not in session until September and this being an election year, it is unclear how high a priority sick leave changes might be this fall.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Governor Gretchen Whitmer referred Bridge Michigan to remarks made by the governor earlier this month in which she said her team was “reviewing the court’s decision.”
Michigan filed a brief with the Supreme Court last week saying the state intends to raise the minimum wage to $12.48 in 2025 and $14.97 by 2028, but there is no action yet on paid time off.
