Missouri Voters Approve Paid Sick Leave

Missouri voters have approved a ballot initiative, Proposition A, which requires all employers to provide paid sick leave to employees. Proposition A will take effect on May 1, 2025.

Next Steps

• Review the requirements of the law and create applicable policies and procedures.
• Display the required poster by April 15, 2025.
• Provide the written notice requirement to employees by April 15, 2025, or within fourteen calendar days of the start of their employment (whichever is later).
• Prepare for employees to begin accruing paid sick leave on May 1, 2025.
• Train supervisors and HR personnel on the requirements under the law.

The Details
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 use on an annual basis depends on the size of the employer.

To determine employer size, count all full-time, part-time, or temporary employees being compensated for performing work in Missouri.

An employer whose number of employees goes above and below 15 employees per week over the year may have to allow employees to use up to 56 hours of earned paid sick leave per year. The requirement is triggered if an employer maintained fifteen or more employees in the state on the payroll for some portion of a working day in each of twenty or more different calendar weeks, including any periods of leave, and whether the weeks were consecutive, in either the current or the preceding year (irrespective of whether the same individuals were in employment in each working day).

Covered Employees

The law applies to individuals employed in Missouri but contains several exceptions.  There is also a temporary exemption for employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in effect as of Nov. 5, 2024.  The law will not apply until the CBA expires.  However, the exemption will not continue simply because the CBA is renewed, extended, amended, or modified after Nov.  5, 2024.  See the text of the law for further details.

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 May 1, 2025 (whichever is later).  The law does not address whether employers can cap annual or overall accrual.  However, employers are permitted to limit annual use to 40 hours (employers with 14 or fewer employees) or 56 hours (employers with 15 or more employees).

Note: Executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales employees who are exempt from overtime requirements under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act will be assumed to work 40 hours per work week for purposes of earned paid sick leave accrual. When an employee's normal work week is less than forty hours, earned paid sick leave will accrue based upon that normal work week.

Existing Paid Leave Policies

An employer with a paid leave policy that meets or exceeds the paid sick leave accrual requirements and has leave that may be used for the same purposes and under the same conditions as earned paid sick leave is not required to provide additional paid sick leave. The paid sick time must be compensated at a rate that meets or exceeds the employee's regular hourly rate and with the same benefits, including health care benefits, as the employee typically earns during their hours worked.

Carryover

An employer must either:

• Carryover up to 80 hours of an employee’s unused and accrued earned paid sick leave at the end of the year; or
• Pay an employee for unused paid sick time and provide the employee with an amount of paid sick time that meets or exceeds the requirements of the law and is available for immediate use at the beginning of the subsequent year.

Employers are not required to pay out sick leave upon an employee’s termination, resignation, retirement, or other separation from employment for accrued earned paid sick leave that has not been used.

Frontloading

An employer may provide all earned paid sick leave that an employee is expected to accrue in a year at the beginning of the year. The law is silent on whether frontloading allows an employer to avoid carry over requirements.

Rate of Pay

When employees use sick time, they must be paid the “same hourly rate” and with the same benefits, including health care benefits, as the employee typically earns during hours worked.  The rate cannot be less than the state minimum wage.   The rate is calculated as follows:

Retention of Paid Sick Leave Benefits

The following employees must retain and be able to use their paid sick leave:

• An employee who is transferred to a separate division, entity, or location, but stays employed by the same employer; and
• An employee who remains employed by a successor employer.
  
  

Additionally, an employee that is separated from and then rehired within nine months by the same employer must have their previously accrued and unused earned paid sick leave reinstated. The employee is also entitled to use accrued earned paid sick leave and accrue additional earned paid sick leave at the recommencement of their employment.

Use

Earned paid sick leave may be used in the smaller of hourly increments or the smallest increment that the employer's payroll system uses to account for absences or use of other time. An employee may use earned paid sick leave as it is accrued and when an employer chooses to loan them earned paid sick leave in advance of accrual.

An employee may use paid sick leave:

• To care for their own or a family member’s:
  
  
• When their business or their child’s school or place of care is closed by order of a public official due to a public health emergency.
  
  
• To care for themselves or a family member when health authorities having jurisdiction or a health care provider determines that the employee’s or family member’s presence in the community may jeopardize the health of others because of their exposure to a communicable disease (whether or not the employee or family member has actually contracted the communicable disease);
  
  
• For a necessary absence due to domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking when the leave is to allow the employee to obtain the following for the employee or the employee’s family member. See the text of the law for further details.

Employee Notice

Employees may make requests for paid sick leave orally, in writing, by electronic means, or by other means acceptable to the employer. The request must:

• Include the expected duration of the absence (when possible);
• Be made in good faith and advance (when foreseeable);
• Make a reasonable effort not to unduly disrupt the operations of the employer.
  
  

Note: When the need for paid sick leave is not foreseeable, an employer may require an employee to provide notice of the need to use earned paid sick leave as soon as practical.

Employer Notice

Employers must provide employees written notice about earned paid sick leave within fourteen calendar days of the commencement of employment or on April 15, 2025 (whichever is later). See the text of the law for further details.

An employer that requires notice of the need to use earned paid sick leave where the need is not foreseeable must provide a written policy that contains procedures for the employee to provide notice. The law prohibits an employer that has not provided to the employee a copy of its written policy for providing this notice from denying an employee from using earned paid sick leave based on non-compliance with such a policy.

Poster Requirements

Beginning April 15, 2025, employers must display a poster that contains the information required by law in a visible and accessible place in each establishment where such employees are employed, provided that such poster has been made available by the Department of Industrial Relations (the Department).

Documentation

An employer may require reasonable documentation for paid sick leave used for three or more consecutive workdays.

In cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, when responding to an employer’s request for documentation, it is the employee’s choice which type of lawful documentation to provide. See the text of the law for further details. An employer may not require that the documentation explain the nature of the illness, details of the underlying health needs, or the details of the domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, unless otherwise required by law.

Nonretaliation

Proposition A prohibits an employer or other person from interfering with, restraining, or denying an employee from using or attempting to use their right to paid sick leave.

Employers are also prohibited from:

• Retaliating or discriminating against an employee or former employee for exercising their rights. See the text of the law for further details.
• Having an absence control policy that counts lawfully earned paid sick leave as an absence that may lead to or result in discipline, discharge, demotion, suspension or other adverse action.
• Requiring that an employee search for or find a replacement worker to cover their paid sick leave hours as a condition of using earned paid sick leave.
• Upholding a waiver by an employee of their paid sick leave rights under the law.

Recordkeeping

Employers must retain records documenting hours worked by employees and earned paid sick time taken by employees for a period of not less than three years, and must also allow the state labor department access to these such records.  The law does not require that information to be included on employee wage statements. 

Employers must maintain an employee’s or their family member’s health or safety information separately from other personnel information; treat it as confidential medical records; and release it only with the express written permission of the affected employee. Employers must keep records documenting hours worked by employees and earned paid sick leave taken by employees for a period of not less than three years. See the text of the law for further details.

An employer may only disclose details relating to an employee’s or an employee’s family member’s health information, domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking as a condition of providing earned paid sick leave where required by law.