Resources for You (Yes, you!)
Since its launch several years ago, our Compliance Center has continuously evolved with new and useful features. Our in-house experts diligently monitor legislative changes to ensure you get access to the most up-to-date information.
Want to find required workplace posters? We’ve got you covered. Need to see how the leave laws and benefit programs in each state interact with each other? There are multiple leave examples to learn from. Want to know what information the state needs from you when an employee claims benefits with that state program? We lay it out and even provide copies of the forms for you.
Discover the wealth of resources from Larkin’s compliance team by visiting the Compliance Center via your Employer Portal account today. Happy exploring!
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City Updates
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The city of Minneapolis has recently passed Ordinance 2025-041 to align city and state law in regard to paid sick and safe time. While the city’s Sick and Safe Time (SST) ordinance took effect in 2017, the statewide Earned Sick and Safe Time law (ESST) went into effect in just 2024. The changes from Ordinance 2025-041 are intended to reduce any confusion or complexity for both employers and employees.
All employers in Minneapolis will be covered by the city SST regardless of their employer size, and employees are eligible if they are anticipated to work for at least 80 hours in a year. Covered family members under the SST have been expanded to include those under the ESST, such as those of a “close association” to the employee and “individuals annually designated by the employee”. Further, while there is no change to the employee accrual cap and overall bank of time, what’s new is that employers can now choose to avoid carryover with two options. First, by front-loading 48 hours at the start of the year and paying out unused hours at the end of the year, or second, by providing 80 hours at the start of the year and not paying out the remaining unused time at the end of the year.
Additionally, there is no longer a 90-day waiting period to be able to access accrued time, employees are entitled to use SST as accrued. Employees with available SST will also be able to utilize the time for bereavement, exposure to a communicable disease, or for a closure to the place of business due to weather. New hires must be provided with written notice of the ordinance and their entitlements, whether it is physically posted within the workplace, within the company’s intranet, or in a paper or electronic copy. If you provide employees with an employee handbook, the notice must also be included.
These changes come into effect as of December 31, 2025, so if you have employees within the city of Minneapolis, please be sure to review and revise your policies and procedures as needed to align with the updates. As a reminder, The Larkin Company does not administer paid sick leave.
New York City
The New York City Council has approved a bill that, if signed by Mayor Adams, will expand the city’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA). Currently, the law requires employers with 99 or fewer employees to provide up to 40 hours of paid safe and sick leave and those with 100 or more employees must provide up to 56 hours of paid leave per year. Employers with 4 or fewer employees must provide at least 40 hours of unpaid leave per year, however, if the employer has a net income greater than $1 million in the previous tax year, then the 40 hours must be paid. If signed into law, we can expect to see the following changes:
Expanded Reasons for Safe & Sick Leave:
- Workplace, school or childcare provider closures or restricted in-person operations due to a public disaster (events such as fire, terrorist attack, severe weather conditions or other catastrophe that is declared a public emergency or disaster by public officials)
- Direction by a public official to remain indoors or avoid travel during a public disaster which prevents an employee from reporting to their work location
- When an employee or their covered family member has been the victim of workplace violence (meaning any act or threat of violence against an employee in a place of employment)
- When the employee is a caregiver for a minor child or care recipient, to provide care to the minor child or care recipient
- To initiate, attend, or prepare for a legal proceeding related to subsistence benefits or housing, take actions necessary to apply for, maintain, or restore subsistence benefits or shelter for the employee or their family member/care recipient
Additional 32 Hour Unpaid Leave:
In addition to the current ESSTA requirements of providing 40 or 56 hours of leave time for covered reasons, all employers will need to provide a separate 32 hours of unpaid safe/sick time that is immediately available for employees upon hire and as of the first day of each calendar year. The unpaid safe/sick time is not required to be carried over to the following calendar year. Employees who require leave due to a covered reason must be provided paid safe/sick time under the existing ESSTA requirements before applying the new unpaid allotment, unless the employee requests otherwise.
Additional 20 Hour Prenatal Leave:
Another addition to the ESSTA will require all employers to provide 20 hours of paid prenatal leave, aligning with the statewide requirement that took effect on January 1, 2025. Employees may take prenatal leave for health care services related to pregnancy including physical examinations, medical procedures, testing, and related health care discussions.
Collective Bargaining and Temporary Schedule Change:
Currently, the provisions of this law do not apply to employees covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement if 1) the provisions are expressly waived and 2) such an agreement provides superior or comparable benefits in the form of leave (both paid and unpaid), compensation or other employee benefits. Unpaid time off is not considered a comparable benefit for the purposes of safe/sick time or paid prenatal leave.
The Temporary Schedule Change Act (TSCA) which requires employers to grant up to two temporary schedule changes (altering dates, hours, times, locations where an employee is expected to work) for a qualifying personal event per year will be eliminated. The new bill incorporates the personal events as part of the covered reasons under the ESSTA. Employees may still request a temporary schedule change and be protected from retaliation for doing so, however, employers will not be required to grant the request.
State Updates
California
You may remember when Governor Newsom signed AB 1041 on September 29, 2022 to expand the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) as of January 1, 2023, to include a “designated person” as a family member for whom an employee could provide care. Well, just yesterday on October 13, 2025, the governor signed SB 590 to align the state’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, which is part of the State Disability Insurance program, with the CFRA.
This means as of January 1, 2028, employees will be able to claim PFL benefits when time off is needed to care for a seriously ill designated person. “Designated Person” means any care recipient related by blood or whose association with the individual is the equivalent of a family relationship. Employees will be required to identify the designated person and attest to how the individual is related by blood to the employee or how the individual’s association with the designated person is the equivalent of a family relationship. This change brings PFL benefits up to speed with more recently implemented state paid family and medical leave programs that include a designated person as a family member. If The Larkin Company administers a Voluntary Plan for you and your California employees, we will update the plan documents with this change for the 2028 plan year.
Also approved this month, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 406, once again amending the Healthy Workplaces Healthy Families Act (HWFA) for the second year in a row, as well as California Government Code section 12945.8, which provides unpaid leave for victims of violence. If you’d like a refresher on last year’s updates amending the HWHFA and providing greater leave protections for victims of violence, you can find it in this newsletter. Some items of AB 406 came into effect immediately since the bill was passed as an urgency statute, while other items will come into effect as of the new year.
Effective October 1, 2025: The HWFA was amended to incorporate existing covered uses under the unpaid leave provided by CA Government Code section 12945.8. Specifically:
- Leave where an employee is a victim of any crime and needs time off to appear in court to comply with a subpoena or other court order as a witness in any judicial proceeding.
- Leave for an employee to serve as required by law on an inquest jury or trial jury.
Effective January 1, 2026, employees will be entitled to utilize unpaid leave if they or their family member are a victim of a certain crime and require time off to appear in court to be heard at a proceeding related to that crime.
- For this leave reason, “victim” is defined as a person against whom a violent or serious felony, and/or felony theft or embezzlement has been committed, and also includes any person who suffers direct or threatened physical, psychological, or financial harm as a result of the commission or attempted commission of a crime or delinquent act. While the employee may be the victim of a crime, a victim may also include the person’s spouse, parent, child, sibling, or guardian.
- Offenses include vehicular manslaughter; felony child abuse likely to produce great bodily harm or a death; assault resulting in the death of a child under 8 years of age; felony domestic violence; felony physical abuse of an elder or dependent adult; felony stalking; solicitation for murder; a serious felony; a hit-and-run causing death or injury; felony driving under the influence causing injury; and sexual assault.
Connecticut
Governor Lamont has announced that the state’s minimum wage will be increasing to $16.94 per hour as of January 1, 2026. This means that the Paid Leave program’s benefit rate will also increase, as the calculation is based on the current minimum wage. For 2026, the weekly benefit amount for CT Paid Leave (CT PL) will be $1,016.40, an increase from 2025’s $981.
Further, the Connecticut Paid Leave Board of Directors have once again voted for the CT PL contribution rate to remain 0.5% for employees in 2026. Employers should continue to remit contributions at the same rate in accordance with this update. As a reminder, contributions are capped at the Social Security Wage base. The amount has not yet been determined for the upcoming year, however we will provide an update once confirmed.
Delaware
As we all know, the Delaware Paid Leave program is soon coming into effect as of the new year. We wanted to give you a heads up that if you were considering implementing a private plan, the private plan application period is now open from October 1, 2025 through December 1, 2025, and will be open each subsequent year. Thus, this will be the only opportunity to file for a private plan until the following October 1, 2026. If interested, you’re able to apply to use a private plan through your Delaware LaborFirst portal.
District of Columbia
The Department of Employment Services (DOES) has released the new maximum weekly benefit for the District’s Paid Family Leave (DC PFL) program. The weekly benefit amount is increasing from $1,153 to $1,190 for all claims with an approved leave period that begins on or after September 28, 2025.
The workplace poster for DC PFL is not yet available, but will likely be released in November. We will be sure to let you know once the updated poster is available.
Massachusetts
The Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (MA PFML) program has released the weekly benefit amount update and contribution rates for the new year. The maximum weekly benefit amount will increase to $1,230.39 (from $1,170.64 in 2025) effective January 1, 2026.
Contribution rates to the program will remain the same as 2025, at a shared cost of 0.88% between employee and employer for those with 25 or more employees. As a reminder, employers with fewer than 25 employees do not need to contribute to the program, but will still need to remit employee contributions. Visit the MA PFML program’s website for a breakdown of the contribution split. This state’s contribution cap is also based on the Social Security Wage base and we will provide an update once the amount becomes available.
Washington
We previously covered House Bill 1213 and its impending changes to the Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave (WA PFML) program. At the time, the bill was waiting for funding within the appropriations budget, and now that the funding has been greenlit, the new law will be going into effect as of January 1, 2026. You can brush up on the incoming changes to WA PFML with our previous newsletter, while below are additional details we didn’t discuss last time:
- Expanded job-protection requirements over a 3-year period: Currently, employers with 50 or more employees are required to provide job protection under the law. This will apply to employers with 25 or more employees by January 1, 2026, 15 or more employees by January 1, 2027, and then 8 or more employees by January 1, 2028.
- Stacking leave: Employers will be allowed to prevent stacking of employment protection rights by applying employment protection of WA PFML to unpaid FMLA leave. To do so, the employer must provide written notice to the employee within 5 business days of either the initial request for FMLA leave, or the use of FMLA leave, whichever is earlier. Subsequent notice should be provided monthly for the remainder of the employer’s designated 12-month leave year, or until FMLA is exhausted. There are several stipulations as far as what the notice requires, and this document from the state’s rulemaking session provides these requirements and some examples.
- Notice of Reinstatement: For a continuous leave that exceeds two typical workweeks, or a combined intermittent leave duration that exceeds 14 typical work days, employers must provide advance written notice to the employee within 5 business days. The notice must provide the date of the employee’s first scheduled workday after their leave, as well as the expiry of their right to employment restoration. If the leave is intermittent, employers may estimate the expiration date based on the information provided by the employee and the ESD.
- Group health insurance continuation: Currently, employers are only required to maintain group health insurance continuation when there is at least a 1 day overlap of FMLA and WA PFML. Once January 1, 2026 rolls around, employers must maintain health care coverage during any period of the employee’s WA PFML leave where they are entitled to job protection under the law.
