Connecticut Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Daniel Schwartz : Stamford, Hartford New Haven, CT

A bill to provide mandatory paid sick leave to employees and a bill to provide greater protection to state whistleblowers were among the employment law-related bills that were not voted upon in the final day of the legislative session -- effectively killing them. 

The Paid Sick Leave bill, S.B. 217, had passed the Senate last week, but the House did not bring the measure up for a vote. As I indicated yesterday, nearly 25 amendments had been proposed on it -- a sign that the bill was going to be in for a long fight.  My earlier coverage of the bill is available here. CT News Junkie has a report on it as well.

The Whistleblower bill, S.B. 335, had also passed the Senate, but again, the House did not act on that provision either. My earlier coverage of the bill is available here.

Other bills that were not acted upon by the legislature include: a Workplace Bullying bill; a bill protecting child in the entertainment industry from child labor abuses; and a bill to allow workers to be paid by a pay or debit card.

One bill that did pass this week allows for the regulation of various professional service organizations and about employee misclassification (H.B. 5113).  I'll cover that in further detail in an upcoming post.

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With one month to go in the shortened legislative session, there hasn't been a lot of action on various labor & employment bills.  Many of the bills I highlighted in the last two months haven't seen a lot of action or are still awaiting further votes.  This post will briefly summarize where some of the bills are based on the Bill Record Book. 

• The Workplace Bullying bill, Senate Bill 60, which I addressed here, appears to be going nowhere. There has been no committee action on it, unlike several others.  In my opinion, there are just too many issues that would need to be resolved and addressed to make the proposed bill a workable law. 
  
• Similarly, Senate Bill 61, which provides additional protections to whistleblowers hasn't gone anywhere yet either.  There has yet to be a hearing on it and no action appears to have been taken on it.  Some of my prior coverage is available here.
  
• On a different note, the bill to allow 15 year olds back into grocery stores, Senate Bill 216, passed the Senate last week.  This one seems like a sure thing to get House approval. For more background on this bill, click here for my prior coverage. 
  
• The Paid Sick Leave Bill, Senate Bill 217, is far from sick. I covered the bill's origins here.  Indeed, the Labor & Public Employee Committee has favorably voted the bill out to the Judiciary Committee on April 3, 2008.  

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After a brief hiatus, Workplace Horizons blog is back with some interesting thoughts on the "Paid Sick Leave" bills pending nationwide and a new website related to the subject that I highlighted last week.  According to Richard, "It’s a pretty slick web site designed to promote the Healthy Families Act."

According to Workplace Horizons:

The Act, introduced in both the House and Senate in 2007, has not yet been voted on by either house of Congress. It would require employers with 15 or more employees to provide 7 days of paid sick leave for employees working 30 or more hours per week. Additionally, it would require a pro-rated number of days or hours of paid sick leave for employees who work less than 30 hours per week (or less than 1,500 hours per year) and allow employees to take leave for their own medical condition, doctor appointments, or preventative or diagnostic treatment. Employees could also use the leave to care for a family member with comparable needs. Leave would be calculated on an hourly basis or in the smallest increment that the employer’s payroll system uses.

Workplace Horizons was also kind enough to post on the workplace bullying legislation I discussed last week. 

It's nice to have Workplace Horizons back for its perspective after its long Foxwoods proceedings. 

On that same note, this blog is going to get a big sparse for the next few weeks.  I've got a trial upcoming in state court in another week or so that will preclude much posting for most of March.   (Need to pay the bills somehow.)  But rest assured that I'll post when I can and will certainly be back in full force after the trial.

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The General Assembly's Labor & Public Employee Hearing on various labor bills went forward as scheduled on Tuesday.  Among the topics --  the workplace bullying bill that I first reported on on Monday.

Senate Bill 60 would create a private cause of action for workplace bullying. However, even if the bill passes the labor committee, it would still need to pass muster with the judiciary committee, according to state Senator Edith Prague.

The Hartford Courant had a report in Wednesday's editions:

The bill, which has the support of committee chair state Sen. Edith Prague, D-Columbia, is actually a revised version of a similar bill that failed to reach a full vote of the assembly last year because of concerns about how it might affect businesses. In particular, opponents worried that the bill, which would allow workplace bullying victims to sue their tormentors, could expose employers to potential damages even if they had consistently tried to create a safe environment for workers.

The new legislation aims to protect employers who have acted in good faith by making them exempt from liability if they can show they took steps to prevent bullying behavior on the part of individual employees or supervisors.

Last week, The Word on Employment Law discussed the possibility that these types of bills were being introduced across the United States.  Earlier this month, Ohio Employer's Law Blog touched the subject as well.  But for a more in-depth look at the subject, the ABA Journal did a nice piece earlier this month. The article quotes from a Tennessee case that perhaps touches on the problem with workplace bullying laws and perhaps over-legislating the workplace. 

The fact that a supervisor is mean, hard to get along with, overbearing, belligerent or otherwise hostile and abusive, does not violate civil rights statutes...

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this bill in the upcoming months. And for the record, i don't think hiring bodyguards for the workplace, as the movie poster suggests, is a good idea.  Stay tuned.

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