Laws on Employee Leave

Below is an introduction to laws on employee leave in Massachusetts. Note that leave requirements vary from state to state. This page is designed to help farmers ensure that they are adhering to applicable laws, but it is not a legal document and is not exhaustive.

Sick Leave

Under Massachusetts law, all employees must be allowed to earn up to at least 40 hours of sick time per calendar year, accruing sick time at a rate of at least one hour per 30 hours worked. If sick time is accrued on a weekly or monthly basis, employees must be allowed to carry over at least 40 hours of sick time from year to year. For farms with an average of eleven or more employees per pay period over the course of the year (including all seasonal, part-time, or temporary workers) this sick time must be paid time; otherwise it may be unpaid. Employers are required to track the number of hours worked by employees and taken for sick leave, and it is illegal for employers to retaliate against employees who request sick leave. For more information on Massachusetts’ sick leave law, click here.

Family and Medical Leave

Under Massachusetts’ new paid, job-protected family and medical leave program, eligible employees are eligible to take up to 12 weeks of paid family leave and/or 20 weeks of medical leave, up to a maximum of 26 weeks total per year. Your employees are eligible for paid family and medical leave unless:

1. They haven’t met the earnings threshold, which requires making at least $4,700 in the previous 12 months and having at minimum approximately 15 weeks of earnings, or
2. They are in a category of employees that is excluded from unemployment benefits, such as H-2A employees or employees on a very small farm.

This leave can be used to:

• Receive treatment for a serious medical condition
• Bond with a newborn or newly adopted child (as a parent of any gender)
• Care for a family member injured during military service
• Handle matters arising from a family member’s active duty military service/deployment
• Care for a family member with a serious medical condition

Employers are required to provide written notification to their existing employees in writing (in the employees’ primary language) about available paid family and medical leave benefits under the program. This notice must be issued to new employees within 30 days of their first day of employment, and the employer must ask employees to sign an acknowledgement of receiving this notice.

The paid leave is funded through a 0.63% payroll tax . A little over half of this amount is funded by employees, who are taxed at a rate currently set at 0.318% of wages. Small employers with under 25 employees will not have to make any additional contributions – they will only have to remit their employees’ contributions. Larger farms with 25 or more employees will, however, be responsible for contributing an additional tax currently set at 0.312% of wages. Employee number is determined by calculating your average number of employees per pay period in the previous calendar year; note that 1099-MISC independent contractors are considered employees for purposes of this calculation if they made up more than half of your workforce. For more information and to verify that the rates above are still up to date, see the Department of Family and Medical Leave’s website.

Note that all workers (of all genders) who have been employed for at least three months at a Massachusetts business with six or more employees are also currently entitled to eight weeks per child of unpaid, job-protected leave under the Parental Leave Act for purposes of giving birth, caring for a newborn, or adopting a child. Generally, this leave would run concurrently with MA Paid Family and Medical Leave described above, unless the employee is not eligible for MA Paid Family and Medical Leave or in limited other circumstances. For example, if an employee has twins, they are eligible for 16 weeks of parental leave (four weeks more than is available through MA Paid Family and Medical Leave). Note that if two employees of the same employer request leave for the same child, the employees are entitled only to eight weeks of parental leave combined (though they would be entitled to more under MA Paid Family and Medical Leave). Covered employers are required to display a poster of employee rights under the Parental Leave Act.

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act is another related law that requires businesses that employ 50 or more employees (for each working day of 20 or more weeks during the current or preceding year) to offer employees up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave per year for family and medical reasons. This leave would also typically run concurrently with Paid Family and Medical Leave, but covered employers are required to display a poster of employee rights under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.