Alaska Voters Approve Paid Sick Leave Requirement

Voters in Alaska have approved a ballot measure (Ballot Measure 1) that will require employers to provide paid sick leave to employees. The requirement takes effect July 1, 2025.

What you need to do

• Review leave policies and update them if necessary.
• Watch for additional guidance and the sample notice that must be provided to employees from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.
• Once published, provide the sample notice to new hires and existing employees.
• Prepare to begin allowing employees to accrue and use paid sick leave beginning July 1, 2025.
• Train supervisors on how to handle leave requests.

What you need to know

Covered Employers and Amount of Paid Sick Leave

The law applies to all employers. However, the amount of paid sick leave that employees must be permitted to accrue on an annual basis depends on the size of the employer.

Covered Employees

The law applies to most employees with several exceptions including certain apprentices employees of non-profit organizations, employees engaged in agriculture, fishing, or domestic service, individuals under 18 years of age employed on a part-time basis not more than 30 hours in a week, and employees who are subject to the federal Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act.

The requirements also do not apply to employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) if the requirements are expressly waived in the CBA in clear and unambiguous terms.  An employer signatory to a multiemployer CBA may fulfill its obligations under the law by making contributions to a multiemployer paid sick leave fund based on the hours each employee accrues under the law while working under the multiemployer CBA, if the fund enables employees to collect paid sick leave from the fund based on hours they have worked under the multiemployer CBA and for covered purposes under the law.

Accrual Rate

Employees must accrue one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. An employee will begin to accrue paid sick time at the commencement of their employment or July 1, 2025 --whichever is later. 

The law allows employers with 14 or fewer employees to cap annual accrual at 40 hours, and employers with 15 or more employees to cap annual accrual at 56 hours. The law does not address whether employers can cap overall accrual.   

Executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales employees who are exempt from overtime requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act  are presumed to work 40 hours in each work week for purposes of paid sick leave accrual unless their normal work week is less than 40 hours, in which case paid sick leave accrues based upon that normal work week.

Existing Paid Leave Policies

Any employer with a paid leave or paid time off policy, that make available an amount of paid leave sufficient to meet the requirements of the law that may be used for the same purposes and under the same conditions as the law requires, is not required to provide additional paid sick leave.

Carryover

Paid sick leave must carry over to the following year and cannot be capped.   However, the law allows employers with 14 or fewer employees to limit annual use to 40 hours, and employers with 15 or more employees to limit annual use to 56 hours.

Frontloading

The law does not address whether frontloading is permitted.  

Rate of Pay

The law does not address the rate of pay. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development could potentially provide guidance through formal rulemaking or informal FAQs in the future.

Use

An employee is entitled to use paid sick leave as it accrues and for the following reasons:

• An employee’s or family member’s mental or physical illness, injury or health condition;
• The employee’s or family member’s need for medical diagnosis, care, or treatment; or the employee’s or family member’s need for preventative medical care;
• Absences necessary due to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, provided the leave is to allow the employee to obtain for the employee or a family member: medical or psychological attention; services from a victim’s aid organization; relocation or steps to secure an existing home; or legal services, including participation in any investigation or civil or criminal proceeding.
  
  

Under the ballot measure, “family member” is defined as:

• An immediate family member;
• A domestic partner;
• A foster child, legal ward, or person to whom an employee stands in loco parentis; a foster parent, adoptive parent, legal guardian, or a person who stood in loco parentis when the employee was a minor child; or
• Any other individual related by blood or whose close association is the equivalent of a family relationship.
  
  

Paid sick leave may be used in the smaller of either 1) hourly increments or 2) the smallest increment that the employer’s payroll system uses to account for absences or use of other time.

Employee Notice

When the need for paid sick leave is foreseeable, the employee must make a good faith effort to provide notice to the employer in advance of the use of paid sick leave and make a reasonable effort to schedule use of paid sick leave in a manner that doesn’t unduly disrupt the employer’s operations.

Documentation

For paid sick leave of more than three consecutive workdays, an employer may require reasonable documentation that the paid sick leave has been used for a purpose covered by the law. See the text of the measure for details on rules surrounding documentation.

Employer Notice

Employers must give employees written notice of the following at the commencement of employment or within 30 days of the law’s effective date -- whichever is later:

• That beginning July 1, 2025, employees are entitled to paid sick leave and the amount of paid sick leave, the terms of its use guaranteed under the law, and that retaliation against employees who request or use paid sick leave is prohibited.
  
  

Retaliation Prohibited

Employers are prohibited from:

• Interfering with or denying the exercise of the right to paid sick leave;
• Taking any other adverse action, against an employee who utilizes, or attempts to utilize, their paid sick leave;
• Requiring, as a condition of an employee’s taking paid sick leave, that the employee search for or find a replacement worker to cover the hours during which the employee is using paid sick leave; or
• Using an absence control policy that counts paid sick leave taken under the law as an absence that may lead to or result in retaliation or any other adverse action.