Protected leave

Proposal:

No employer shall be compelled to provide paid protected leave to employees. Laws enacted to provide protected leave can only require unpaid protected leave. The government may pay people on protected leave directly.

Intent:

If the government also decides to pay people in protected leave, it must be the government that does it and not employers. Employers are not prevented from paying employees in protected leave, either to the extent that they have paid leave programs that can run concurrently with the protected leave, or beyond it.

Any government payments to people on protected leave must be directly to those people and not through the employer. This accomplishes two things: First, it lessens the administrative burden on employers, who only have to manage their own leave programs and not also the government’s leave programs. Second, recipients can clearly see which payments are employer benefits and which payments are government benefits, and communicate with the appropriate office if there are any issues.