Advocacy News – Oct. 23, 2024
Nearly a hundred small businesses gathered in Grand Rapids Tuesday to discuss the impact the upcoming paid leave and minimum wage changes will have on businesses and employees alike. This is a top concern for the business community and those in attendance called for swift legislative action to improve implementation of the new requirements.
What businesses are saying:
- “We will have a hard time paying our bills due to the new laws around sick time. We will see a decrease in the amount of business we can do.”
- “The amount of tracking and monitoring will impact our organization negatively by pulling resources from alternate operations that enhance our organization into a time keeping and logging nightmare.”
- “The increase in the minimum wage is going to likely close one of my locations with the proposed changes. There’s just not a way to offset the proposed increases.”
Go deeper: A broad coalition is focused on five consensus changes that will make the Earned Sick Time Act (ESTA) more workable:
- Exempt plans that meet or exceed the mandated 72 hours.
- Exempt small businesses and certain workers (part-time and seasonal employees and independent contractors).
- Require time to be used in half-day increments and allow employers to require advanced notice.
- Eliminate private right of action and rebuttable presumption.
- Allow employers to frontload 72-hours at the start of the year and avoid carryover.
On minimum wage, the ask is simple: restore the tipped minimum wage.
Get educated and engaged:
- Join us Oct. 30 for a live Q&A session on the ESTA, which will include an overview of what’s happened, the key components of the new laws and implications for Michigan employers.
- Register for the webinar.
- Visit our compliance toolkit.
- Make your voice heard with lawmakers by participating in quick and easy action alerts (emails to lawmakers):