Honorable Calvin K.Y. Say

Speaker, House of Representatives

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Labor and Public Employment, to which was referred H.B. No. 850 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this bill is to require employers to allow their employees to use their sick leave to take care of a child, parent, spouse, or reciprocal beneficiary.

Your Committee finds that Hawaii has a high percentage of two-wage earner families, and a particularly high number of employees who are also parents of school children. These employees have a difficult enough time juggling their schedules when their children and extended family members are well. When a parent or child is ill, however, the system falls apart. Employees must take vacation time off to care for sick children, elderly parents, or seriously ill spouses or reciprocal beneficiaries as most employers do not allow the employees to take their own sick leave to attend to their sick family members.

These employees are not experiencing the rest and relaxation from work that is the point of vacation time when they care for sick relatives; instead, they are hard at work on the home front, stressing out about missing work and concerned about how using vacation time now may lead to the inability to care for children during school breaks later during the year. Some employers have recognized this problem and allow employees to use their accrued sick leave to care for close relatives. This is a sensible and humane alternative that recognizes the reality that employees do need to care for their young children and elderly parents without penalizing them for doing so.

Testimony in support of the bill was received from the ILWU, the UPW, the HSTA, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Testimony in opposition as received from the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations and the Hawaii Bankers Association.

Your Committee has amended this bill by changing the effective date to July 1, 2020, for the purposes of further discussion.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Labor and Public Employment that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 850, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 850, H.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Finance.