New York has adopted regulations implementing the state’s paid family-leave law. The regulations outline the mandates on employers and insurance carriers in implementing the paid family-leave program.

The program is mandatory for nearly all private employers — any employer with one additional employee. Public employers may opt into the program.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2018, employers will be required to provide paid family leave, providing employees with wage replacement and job protection to help them “bond” with a child, care for a close relative with a serious health condition, or help “relieve” family pressures when someone is deployed abroad on active military service. 

Employees are also entitled to return to their job when their leave ends and to continued health-insurance coverage during their leave, the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news release issued July 19. If the workers contribute to the cost of their health insurance, they must continue to pay their portion of the premium cost while on paid family leave.

The regulations address eligibility, coverage, the phase-in schedule for paid family leave, and more information on how employees, employers, and insurance carriers will interact to pay benefits.

“There is a time in everyone’s lives where being there for a loved one in need is more important than anything and, finally, New Yorkers will no longer have to choose between losing their job and being a decent human being,” Cuomo contended in the release. 

The regulations

Paid family leave provides coverage for parents during the first 12 months following the birth, adoption, or fostering of a child.

It also provides coverage for employees caring for a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, parent-in-law, grandparent, or grandchild with a serious health condition.

And, the program covers employees assisting loved ones when a spouse, child, domestic partner, or parent is deployed abroad on active military duty.

Employee eligibility

Employees with a regular work schedule of 20 or more hours per week are eligible after 26 weeks (or a half year) of employment, Cuomo’s office said.

Those employees with a regular work schedule of less than 20 hours per week are eligible after 175 days worked.

Insurance coverage 

Paid family-leave coverage will typically be included as a rider to an employer’s existing disability-insurance policy, and will be “fully funded” by employees through payroll deductions, the state says.

In 2018, the maximum employee contribution is 0.126 percent of an employee’s weekly wage up to 0.126 percent of the annualized New York State average weekly wage. 

Phase-in

New York will phase-in paid family leave over four years, beginning Jan. 1, 2018. 

In 2018, employees may take up to eight weeks of paid leave at 50 percent of an their average weekly wage — up to 50 percent of the New York State average weekly wage. 

That increases to 12 weeks of paid leave in 2021, paid at 67 percent of an employee’s average weekly wage — up to 67 percent of the New York State average weekly wage.

Employers are not allowed to ask their workers to use any of their sick or vacation days while they are on paid family leave. ν