Coffee Talk: Navigating Leave Laws: Ensuring Compliance and Managing Employee Absences Effectively

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's session of Ramon's Coffee Talk. I'm Christine Whitnaben, Senior Human Capital Business Advisor here at Ramon, and I'm happy to welcome you to this informative discussion about navigating leave laws. Now, given the complexity of today's topic, we may run slightly over the 30-minute window. We want to make sure that we cover all of the key details and nuances of this topic. So today we have the pleasure of hearing from 3 exceptional professionals who will help us understand what we need to know. Joining us are Tara Hama and Christopher Kelly, who are employment law partners at Ramone, along with Maureen Bradley, one of Ramone's human capital business advisors. Should you have any questions, please use the Q&A portal and we will do our best to address the questions. If we can't get to all your inquiries today, don't worry, we will follow up via email after the presentation. Now, before we dive into the program, I just want to make a note that today's discussion does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Also remember that any past outcomes do not guarantee future results. So now let's jump right into today's program. We'll start off today with Tara. Hi, Tara.

Hi, Christine. Thank you. Hi, everyone. As Christine said, my name is Tara Homa. I'm an employment law partner here at Ramon Law. And today we are going to be covering leave laws both on the federal and state level. And so with that, I'll quickly go over our agenda here. Give me 1 second. The slide is not turning. Okay, there we go. So we're, like I said, we're going to be covering federal leave law and federal leave requirements under the FMLA, the ADA, and USERRA. We'll cover state and local leave requirements. Maureen will be speaking with us about that. We'll briefly cover workers' compensation benefits as well as pay benefits versus leave benefits. And then we'll talk a little bit both throughout the presentation and at the end about the interactions between all of these laws and employer common pitfalls and best practices with regard to the interactions between all of these leave laws and pay benefits. So I'm going to start talking about the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act, also known as FMLA. I'm sure most of you have heard of that acronym before. Which employers are covered under the FMLA? So the FMLA covers employers who have 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius. There are some nuances involved with regard to how to count the 50 employees as well as what is included within the 75-mile radius. With regard to the 50 or more employee count, it's determined based on the number of employees on the payroll, regardless of whether they are part-time, seasonal, or temporary. The 75-mile radius is measured from the employee's worksite by surface miles. So basically, you know, if you type, type it into Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever you use, it's within a 75-mile radius. The worksite is normally the site to which the employee reports to or from which the employee receives assignments. And this comes into play that when we're talking about remote workers. So under the regulations, An individual's residence, personal residence, is not a work site. So for remote workers, for example, you would be looking at the work site where they either— the physical work site where they either report into or receive assignments from, and that individual would be counted under the 50 employee count, or if there's more, for FMLA coverage, and would also be covered under FMLA if they are associated with a site that has 50 or more individuals. Which employees are covered? So individuals who have worked for the employer for 12 months and who have worked 1,250 hours within those 12 months. There are also some nuances with regard to the 12-month period. It doesn't necessarily have to be 12 consecutive months. Certain breaks in service, you know, will be disregarded when we're looking at the 12 months of employment. So if you have a situation where someone was working for you, had a break in service, and, you know, then continued to work for you, you will just want to make sure you're following the rules with regard to how you count the 12 months in that type of situation. The employee also, as I said, has to have 1,250 hours of work within those— within the 12 months immediately preceding the to the start of the FMLA leave. So if an individual has worked for 12 months but has not met that requirement, that individual will not be entitled to FMLA leave. When— like I said, there are nuanced issues with how to count the employees. I talked about that a little bit. But when are employers on notice of the need to provide FMLA forms or notice to employees? The employer has to provide the notice to the employees when they have enough information to determine that the leave may be for a qualifying reason under FMLA. This is important because employees do not need to specifically ask for FMLA leave, nor do they have to mention FMLA at all when they are reporting, you know, the reason for their absences. And so an example of this would be, You know, if an employee calls out sick and says, I've been suffering for the past 3 months from migraines and I need to take a day or 2 days or 3 days off, something like that could trigger the employee— the employer to then make additional inquiries to determine whether the leave could be FMLA qualifying. There's a ton of court cases on this particular issue, and so make sure if you are an employer who is covered by FMLA that you are kind of looking a little bit deeper into the employee's request as opposed to just saying, oh, they didn't, you know, make a specific ask for FMLA leave, so we're not going to provide them with the notices. What are the benefits of FMLA? So FMLA provides 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave to to employees who are covered by it. There is a provision that provides for 26 weeks in certain military-related situations. So if you have that type of situation, you'll wanna specifically look into that. The 12 weeks are whatever the employee's normal scheduled work week is. So if an employee works 30 hours in a week, they would get 12 weeks of 30 hours of leave. To cover their normally scheduled hours. An employee can take FMLA in either a continuous period of time or on an intermittent or reduced schedule basis. We have— this is kind of one of the situations that we see come up a lot with regard to intermittent leave. It's harder for employers to plan for, and it provides a greater avenue for potential abuse by employees. And so we see a lot of situations where employers are kind of questioning whether someone is using intermittent leave for the reason that they requested it for. And so as an employer, if you have employees on intermittent leave and this is a concern that you may have, make sure that you are looking at the medical certifications that are provided initially. If the doctor is saying in the certification that the employee needs intermittent leave and they're estimating it to be 1 day per month for the next 6 months, for example, and the employee is taking 3 days per week, you may have a basis to kind of make further inquiries, ask for additional medical certifications and things like that. So there are ways to put some guardrails on this and make sure people are using it for the intended purpose and not abusing it. What types of leave is covered or are covered? Birth or adoption or foster placement of a child is a covered reason. Care for a family member with a serious health condition. Leave needed for an employee's own serious health condition. And then, like I said before, there are certain covered reasons related to a family member's military service. Concurrent use of paid leave. We can address this a little bit later on when we talk about the interactions between the leave laws, but employers— the general rule is that employers can require employees to use paid leave time concurrently if the leave is not covered by another pay benefit that would prevent that. So for example, if an employee is covered by FMLA but is also receiving state temporary disability benefits or family leave insurance benefits, the employer can then not also require them to use their PTO, but can permit them to. So a lot of employers who have employees receiving some other type of pay benefit will tell an employee, for example, you know, if you're only getting 66% of your wages, you can use your PTO to supplement that or things like that. So concurrent use of paid leave is a topic that you should definitely be thinking about when you have an individual on FMLA who is also getting these other pay benefits or paid leave benefits. And I will say that a lot of state sick leave laws specifically say that an employer cannot require the employee to use the paid sick leave. So, you'll kind of see a theme throughout today that all of these leave laws have different requirements, and you want to make sure that in each specific situation and for each specific employee that you're kind of considering how they all work together and how you can appropriately apply them in each specific situation. So, with that, I will turn it over to Kris to talk about the ADA.

All right, next we're going to turn to the ADA, because leave can be a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as potentially under state or local disability laws. If we're talking about which employers are covered, for the ADA, it's those with 15 or more employees. But again, you want to be very careful to look at state and local laws, because many states cover all employers or maybe only employers with only as few as 5 employees for their state discrimination laws. And so you want to be sure you're checking both options, because generally state laws for disabilities, not always, but generally, they provide broader coverage than the ADA. So you would have to do at least what you would have to do on the ADA, if not more. Which employees are covered is a very complicated question. There's been a whole lot of litigation on this. It's an employee with a disability is the way you would say it colloquially, but the definition is actually quite complicated. It's an employee with a physical or mental impairment that impairs their ability to perform major life activities. So it's not as simple an analysis as it is under many state laws where if someone's unable to— they're paralyzed and unable to walk, that they are, you know, by definition disabled. You have to look at it on a more nuanced level. It's not by disability, just by the name of the disability. And the employee also has to be able to perform the functions of their job with or without reasonable accommodations. So we want to look at what the benefits are that the ADA provides with respect to leave. So, as I mentioned before, leave can be a reasonable accommodation, an employee can request leave. And just like what Tara just discussed with the FMLA, there's no magic words for this request. They just kind of have to let you know. They don't have to mention the ADA. They don't have to say, or a state law, and say they're requesting leave as an accommodation. All they have to do is let you know that they're disabled and they need assistance, and you then are required as an employer to engage in a reasonable— in an interactive process with them to determine what sort of accommodation is reasonable, which can include leave. You also have to look at whether other reasonable accommodations are available. One major hiccup that I see a lot of employers getting stuck on is that leave reasonableness is determined based on when it's requested. You can't look back and say, "Well, the employee's already had 12 weeks of FMLA, so giving them one extra week is not reasonable." You're just looking at that one week. Is that 1 week reasonable under the circumstances? Same thing with prior ADA leave. If they have— if they've been on leave, you know, for a month and the doctor comes back and says they need 3 more days and they'll be able to return to work without restrictions, that's probably a reasonable accommodation. If they're saying they don't know when they can come back, it's indefinite, it's a multi-month thing, that requires a different analysis. So you can consider looking back. It's very fact-specific, and you can look back and say, well, this employee has been on leave for months and months, and we're no closer to finding any resolution to this issue. The doctor's notes are not suggesting that the employee is ever going to be able to come back. That's something you can look into. And generally speaking, most federal courts that have looked at this issue do not think that a multi-month leave or an indefinite leave is a reasonable accommodation. They think it falls outside of the category of what could be reasonable. They also— some of them have said that it removes you from being a covered person under the ADA, because you have to be able to do your job with or without accommodation. And so the purpose of the ADA is to allow you to work, not to not work. And so if it becomes, you know, multi-month leaves or indefinite leave, that's allowing you to not work. Again, you have to look at this very closely on a case-by-case basis because, you know, if an employee has surgery and the doctor says they need 8 weeks and then they'll be able to return to work without any restrictions, while that is a multi-month leave, it's a very definite time frame. It's only 2 months and then they can come back to doing their job. That's different from an employee who goes out for 1 month, the doctor gives another note saying we'll do 1 more month and 1 more month and 1 more month, and then you're at 6 months. That, that looks a little different. But you should also note that state and local laws may allow for multi-month leaves or indefinite leaves, so that's also something you got to take a look at. In terms of what types of leave can be a reasonable accommodation, just like under the FMLA, you can have a continuous leave, you can have an intermittent leave, you can provide the employee with a reduced or modified schedule, you can give them more breaks throughout the day if they need that. One thing that's interesting to consider is that intermittent leave is not an express requirement under the ADA the way it is under the FMLA. The regulations for the FMLA specifically allow for intermittent leaves. So, under the ADA, if you're analyzing a leave as a potential accommodation, you can look at whether the, you know, impact that will have on the employer, on the operations of the employer. Is providing an intermittent leave going to be an undue burden for the employer? Does it make the request unreasonable? Those are things you can consider and are going to vary very much depending on the facts, again, of the scenario. Is there, you know, is this employee who's the only one who does their job, does that mean that the employer is therefore not going to be able to perform that function? Are there other people who can fill in? These are all things you would need to consider. Next, we're going to take a look at the differences between the ADA and the FMLA. So, the FMLA, as Tara mentioned, covers a serious health condition, which is not necessarily a disability. It can also cover if you're taking care of, for example, a family member. The ADA, as I mentioned, covers disabilities of the employee, not of someone else, and is a much more nuanced definition of what constitutes disability. So, you need to be aware that you can sometimes qualify for FMLA leave, sometimes qualify for leave as an accommodation of the ADA, or sometimes qualify for both. And one of the recurring themes you will see throughout this presentation is that these are things you got to be looking at under multiple statutes throughout the process. So perhaps when the employee first comes in and says they need leave, you determine that they're entitled to FMLA leave but not leave as an accommodation under the ADA, that might change as things go forward. So, for example, when they exhaust their FMLA, they may then be entitled— you have to look at that again to see if they're entitled to leave as an accommodation. Or even before that, if you get a new doctor's note in, that may change your analysis. You need to be continuously evaluating this as new information comes in. The FMLA's 12 weeks of leave is a floor, not a ceiling. So, you do need to keep considering whether after the 12 weeks you can provide additional accommodation as a leave, as a reasonable accommodation. It doesn't block things off. And the other context in which we see this quite frequently is a lot of employers think that once an employee becomes eligible for long-term disability, that they no longer need to consider these leaves, particularly the ADA, because usually by the time you're on long-term disability, FMLA has been exhausted, although not necessarily, but that's not true. You do have to consider still whether leave as an accommodation is possible, even if the employee is on long-term disability. Another cautionary note is that it's important to use proper and distinct forms for the different types of leave and pay benefits you get— you're offering. You shouldn't have an employee just fill out one form for FMLA/ADA accommodations because the inquiries are very different. What the information you need from an employee is different. There are different confidentiality rules under the FMLA versus the ADA, although they're similar for how you have to protect the employee's medical information. There are different rules about the types of medical inquiries you're allowed to engage in and what sort of factual basis enables you to have that sort of conversation, when you can talk to an employee's physician directly and find out, gather further information, when you can ask the employee for further information at all. If the note is clear, often you can't even seek clarification on that unless there's some other basis for that.

And same thing with the disability insurance benefits forms. Generally, you don't want to be relying on them in determining whether you can grant an accommodation under the ADA, because the standards are sometimes different.

Absolutely.

All right. So, I'm going to quickly, given our time here, I'm going to quickly cover this topic as it's one of the more limited topics that we're going to talk about today, and that's the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, otherwise known as USERRA. And USERRA basically says that employers must provide the same rights and benefits, including paid leave benefits, to employees on military leave that they provide to similarly situated employees on comparable forms of non-military leave. There have been a number of cases over the past few years related to this issue, which is why we included it here. Courts have allowed claims to proceed past a motion to dismiss stage where an individual who had taken, in most cases, a shorter-term military leave basically claimed that the employer provided other comparable leave to non-military individuals. So, for example, jury duty leave, bereavement leave. In some cases, it was argued that sick leave was similar. And so the argument is, because employer, you are providing these other types of paid leave in allegedly similar situations, you then are required under USERRA to provide this military leave as paid leave as well. There's currently a case that I will just briefly mention pending in the Eastern District of New York dealing with this specific issue. It's a class action, a very large class action, against a very large online retailer. And these were the arguments that were made. The district judge denied the defendant's motion to dismiss and basically said the case could proceed. The defendant asked to certify the issue, or I'm sorry, appeal the issue to the Second Circuit, and the district judge said no. So depending on how the case proceeds, we may eventually see an appeal to the Second Circuit on the issue. It hasn't been decided in the Second Circuit yet. However, it has been decided in other circuits. So for instance, in the Third Circuit in 2024, the court made a similar— upheld the denial of a motion to dismiss on a similar basis. So the takeaway here is just that you should, as an employer, be looking at your paid leave policies and your military leave policy and determining whether some of these leaves are comparable or could be argued to be comparable to military, certain military leaves, and whether you then are responsible for providing pay to individuals on military leave similar to the pay that you provide individuals taking these other potentially comparable forms of leave. And with that, I'll turn it over to Maureen to talk about the New York State leave laws.

Thanks, Tara. So the first— there's 11 leaves on this list. We're not going to hit all of them just for time purposes. We're going to hit the top 3, which are the paid sick leave, the paid family leave, and the paid prenatal leave, and then we'll hit the COVID leave at the bottom. So the first one is the New York State Paid Sick and Safe Leave. So all private sector employees in New York State are covered under this law. And the law requires employers, depending on their size, to provide paid sick leave— sick safe leave to their employees. It all comes back to September 30th, 2020, when the employees started to accrue the leave, with the first time them being able to use the leave as January 1st, 2021. So if you're an employer with 0 to 4 employees and you have net income less than $1 million, you have to provide your employees with 40 hours of unpaid sick safe leave. If you have 0 to 4 employees and you have over a net income of over $1 million, you have to provide the employees with 40 hours of paid sick leave. 5 to 99 employees, 40 hours of paid sick leave, and 100 plus, it's 56 hours. All of this is based on a calendar year. Now, if you're looking to determine how many employees you have, what do you look for? So if you have only a presence in New York State, you are counting all of your employees in New York State. If you've got a presence in, let's say for example, New York and New Jersey, you're counting the employees both of those states. However, only the employees who work physically in New York are able to take advantage of this leave. As far as your employee count, if at the beginning of the year you had 95 employees and all of a sudden in the following year you jumped up to 105 employees, you must immediately give your employees that bump up in sick-safe leave. So, they went from having 40 hours to now having 56 hours. Now, unfortunately, the converse isn't true. If you went from 105 down to 95, you've got to wait to the following year to reduce the sick safe leave that you would be giving your employees. And you can either front-load the leave for your employees, so meaning at the beginning of the year you can give them that 40 or 56 hours, or you can do the accrual method, which is the New York State minimum of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked. Now employees, as far as use, they can verbally tell you that they need it or they can put it in writing, and you as the employer can set the minimum increment amount for the use of that sick leave. However, that cannot exceed 4 hours. Now, how can they use it, or what reasons do they have for using it? So it's either the employee or a family member's diagnosis, care, or treatment of a physical or a mental illness, injury, or health condition, or preventative care. Or they can also use it for either themselves or a family member who is a victim of domestic violence, a family offense, a sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking. And the employee needs time off for one of those reasons, such as for going to court, filing a complaint, visiting a crisis center. As far as who's covered, who can you take the leave for? So, you can take it for, in addition to yourself, a spouse, domestic partner, a child, which includes a biological, adoptive, or foster child, a legal ward, or the child of an employee who is standing in loco parentis, which means you're taking care of the child as if they were your own, or the child of a spouse or domestic partner, a parent, a sibling, a grandchild, or grandparent. In some cases— oh, no, sorry, that would be paid family leave. Forget about that. As far as documentation, you really can't provide much. You know, once an employee's out more than 3 days, you can ask them to provide some sort of documentation to substantiate the reason for their leave, but that documentation is not going to be as specific as perhaps you would like. The law says you can only get it from— you can only ask ask for the duration of the leave, the date that the employee may return to work, and that will be from a licensed healthcare provider, or it's just the employee stating that they need that leave. As far as carrying over, so you give them 40 or 56, what happens at the end of the year when they have that leave time left over? The law says that you have to roll it over. However, an employer can give the employee the option of taking a payout of that should the employer choose that option. Otherwise, it gets rolled over to the next year. And the employers do have the option of limiting how much time an employee may use from that bucket. So, if you only use 10 hours and I am rolling it to the next year and I had 40 at the beginning, so now I have 70, I can only use— the employee can say, "You can only use 40 hours." So, someone could continually, if they're, you know, healthy and don't use their sick time, have a large bucket, but the employer can definitely define how much time they can use within a year. You're paying the employee at the regular rate of pay or the minimum wage, applicable minimum wage, whichever happens to be greater. As far as recordkeeping purposes, you are required to maintain payroll records for at least 6 years on the leave that they're taking. Employees are also required to see on their pay stubs how much time, the hours that they're entitled to and how much they've used, and so that they have a quick reference point to say, you know, how much sick time do I have? They can also to you and ask you, "How much time have I had in this year and the previous year?" And you have 3 days to respond to that request when they're asking for that information. The New York State Paid Family Leave, it's been around for quite a while. It came around in staggered implementation on January 1st, 2018. It provides eligible employees with job-protected leave, taking time off for bonding with a new child, care of a family member with a serious health condition, or because of a military leave. Leave situation. It's fully funded by employees' payroll deductions. This year, the contribution rate is 0.388% of the employee's gross wages per pay period with a maximum contribution from an employee of $354.53. And in this particular leave, it may run concurrently with FMLA. It depends on who you're taking the leave for. The only person you can't take this leave for is for yourself. You would be taking New York State Disability if you were out on leave. The eligibility requirements for the PFL, you have to work— the employee has to work 20 or more hours for the employer for 26 consecutive work weeks, or if they work fewer than 20 hours, they have to work 175 days in a 50-week— a consecutive 52-week period. And important to note, once an employee gains eligibility for PFL, they do not lose their eligibility until they leave the company and move to some other employer. It's a wage replacement. How much are they going to get? They get 67% of their average weekly wage or New York State's average weekly wage, whichever is lower, to the maximum amount of $1,177.32. So they, similar to FMLA, they can take the leave continuously. So it will be those 12 weeks that they're entitled to in a consecutive 52-week period, or they can do it intermittently But if they were— if they leave your employment, they're only entitled to those 12 weeks between the 2 employers or 3 employers, however many it may be. A specific nuance to New York State Paid Family Leave is that the leave can only be taken in full-day increments. You cannot take it in a half day like the FMLA allows. So it's a full-day increment. Similar reasons to FMLA, They— the qualifying reasons for leave is physical or psychological care of a family member, bonding for a child, whether it be an actual birth, adoption, or foster placement, or that military qualifying exigent leave. I always get tongue-tied. Big difference here is the definition of family member versus FMLA. It includes Child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner. We don't have the grandparent or the grandchild or sibling in the FMLA. And, well, I don't need to define for you who a child or a parent is. Leave can be taken continuously or intermittently. So continuously, it's that 12-week period. Should an employee decide to take it intermittently, it's not like they're going to get that full 12 weeks just by days. It depends on how how many days do they work in a week. So, if, for example, an employee is working 3 days a week and taking those other 2 days intermittent leave, they're entitled to the 3 days times 12, so they're entitled to 36 days of leave versus the 60 days had they been taking it as continuous leave. Ideally, we want the employee to give us 30 days advance notice when they know the need for leave is practicable. If they don't, if it's foreseeable, if they can't, then they should notify you, of course, as soon as possible that they need to take the leave. There is a specific form that needs to be completed so that the form can be sent to your disability carrier who will be managing the leave as well as approving the leave. The employee fills out their portion, there's an employer portion. Now, depending on what your policy is, you can either have or require the employee, after you've given them their information on that form, to submit the form to the disability carrier, or you can, on their behalf, submit it to the disability carrier so that you know that it's getting there. Once the carrier has received the information, they have 7 17 days in which to approve or deny the leave for the employee. Another specific to the paid family leave, which is also with the FMLA, is that if your employee is on your benefits, you must continue the benefits as if they were working. They have to— if the employee has a contribution, they must give that contribution to you in a timely fashion. If they fail to make those payments, then you can terminate the healthcare coverage. And also, the Paid Family Leave does provide job protection. So once the employee does come back from the leave, absent any, you know, circumstances where you can't restore them to their job, they should be returned to the job that they had previously left. The new law for New York State employers is the Paid Prenatal Leave. Effective January 1st of this year, you are required to provide employees with 20 hours of paid leave per year for either prenatal healthcare, doctor's appointments, anything related to their pregnancy. The law took effect as of January 1st, and it is available to any female who's pregnant immediately. There is no wait time like FMLA. You have to work a year and 1,250 hours. They are immediately able to use these 20 hours for the pregnancy leave. Excuse me. And this is important to note on this particular leave that it is separate and apart from the New York State paid sick leave. So you may have to give an employee 40 hours under the paid sick and safe leave. A pregnant employee is going to get another 20 hours over and above that. They should be giving you advance notice when they can of the need to take the leave. So, you know, pregnant women usually go every month. They should say, "Okay, I need to take the day off." for this or the hours off for this particular leave. They should try to schedule the leave so that it's not affecting their work and disrupting the workplace, but sometimes that doesn't happen and they have to take off during that time. And you really can't require that much notice from the employee in terms of, you know, "Here's a piece of paper that says I went to my doctor's appointment" type of deal. You could if it seems to be that they're abusing it, but in general you cannot ask for any information from that. Also key to note here is that if the pregnant employee has 20 hours, should they leave your employment, you are not required to pay the balance of what might be left in whatever leave they have at those 20 hours. And last but not least, New York employers are probably jumping for joy at this. We finally do not have to pay employees for COVID after July 31st. So if they use the leave less than 3 times, you're still, depending on how severe the case is, may have to pay them for COVID leave, but after that, we are no longer required to pay them for COVID leave. Finally, after 5 years, we don't have to do that anymore. And that's all I got for you on the New York State leaves.

One other thing I would just add to what Maureen said about New York's categories of people for whom you can take paid family leave being broader than the FMLA is it's really something you need to look at on a very statute-specific basis. That it varies a lot from state to state. In New Jersey, for example, in addition to having a longer list of categories than the FMLA, also has this catch-all at the end that says, or anyone in a similar relationship. So if someone was like a grandmother to the employee, they could potentially provide care for them and have that be protected leave, which almost makes it limitless. You know, anyone the employee decides that they feel close to could be covered. So it's very important to look at them. All right, I know we've run over now, so we're going to try and get through this last little bit quickly. Workers' compensation, generally a matter of state law, so you need to look at each state specifically. It was originally conceived of as an alternative to lawsuits by employees against employers for money damages. So it generally doesn't provide leave. The idea was to give the employee a trade-off where they would get money quickly and in an almost guaranteed way if there was an injury at work, but with— and have medical care provided, but without the need to do a lawsuit. So leaves were not really something that was contemplated when they did that. It just covers medical expenses, lost wages, etc. However, other leaves can cover someone while they're on workers' comp. So again, when someone is on workers' comp, when they've had an injury at work, work, you need to be looking at FMLA leave. You need to be looking at ADA leave or potential state disability leaves. And another item to consider is that most states provide that an employee cannot be retaliated against for filing a workers' compensation claim. So again, that's a, that's something you need to keep in mind when you're making these decisions. Terri, you're muted.

Whoops. So, we've been talking about this throughout, the difference between a pay benefit and a leave benefit. And essentially, a pay benefit is a law insurance policy or employer policy that provides wage supplements or pay benefits to individuals while they are out on leave. As opposed to a leave benefit, which may provide job protection for individuals, provide leave benefits and job protection during that leave for individuals who are out on leave. Some laws provide both of those things combined, and some provide one or the other. So, for example, FMLA and an ADA leave as an accommodation is a leave benefit, but not a pay benefit. New Jersey state Temporary disability insurance or family leave insurance is a pay benefit, but not a leave benefit. Workers' comp, as Kris said, is a pay benefit, but generally not a leave benefit. Short-term and long-term disability insurance policies provide pay benefits, but generally don't provide leave benefits. And the payors for all of these different types of pay benefits can be different. So for example, under the New Jersey State Temporary Disability Insurance or Family Leave Insurance, that is paid by the state in conjunction with payroll, uh, withholdings that an employer takes out of an employee's pay to cover that. Um, when we're talking about workers' comp or temporary dis— uh, short-term or long-term disability insurance policies, that is something that's going to be paid by an insurer. Um, and so the point here is just that employers need to consider the differences between pay benefits versus leave benefits and how that— how they should be considering those interactions when they are approving leaves and also in employees applying for these pay benefits. And that brings us to our final slide, and we apologize for running over. This is the interactions between the different laws. Concurrent use of leave, we talked about that previously as it applies to FMLA leaves. It needs to be considered again on a case-by-case basis depending on what types of leave and pay benefits are at play in a particular circumstance. Concurrent use of unpaid leave and pay benefits, we talked about this as well. When you're talking about an FMLA leave or an ADA leave as an accommodation, You may need to, you know, assist workers or individuals may apply for separate pay benefits if it's a workplace injury under the workers' comp policies, potentially under state disability benefits laws or just short-term or long-term disability benefits policies. Could a leave be covered by multiple laws? We also talked about that. Yes. And as an employer, you should make sure you're aware of each of the leave laws laws that you're required to provide to employees and be doing analyses in these situations under all of those laws. And employers should consider all leaves throughout the process. Kris talked about this earlier with regard to the ADA accommodation situations, for example. And Kris also mentioned this specific example, which is when an employee moves from receiving benefits, pay benefits under a short-term disability policy, onto a long-term disability policy. That is a totally separate question from whether an employer needs to provide leave to that individual. I've seen situations where employers think that they can terminate employment as soon as an individual moves from receiving short-term disability benefits to long-term disability benefits, and that's not necessarily the case. It kind of needs to be considered in each specific situation. And so the takeaway here in general is just to make sure when you are dealing with individuals requesting leave and applying for pay benefits that you're taking all of these things into consideration given the specifics of the situation. Again, we— I don't— I think there are a few questions that we haven't answered. We will— we've ran a bit over, so we'll probably take advantage of responding to those by email as opposed now. And thank you everyone for joining us today.

Yes, like Tara said, thank you everybody for joining us. Just so you know, we're going to have another coffee talk in May of this year, so you'll have all that information. And for those that were not able to stay on, or whoever wants to repeat listening to this program, you will receive a link to today's session by email, and we will answer those residual questions that I see that we have open still and we'll provide to you directly by email. Thank you again, and we look forward to seeing you in May. Have a good day, everybody. Bye-bye.