Utahns who work for the state could see changes to their benefits, including their paid -time off, if a proposed bill becomes law.
While the Republican lawmaker sponsoring the proposal described it as an “update and enrichment of state employee benefits,” getting rid of sick leave has state employees divided, with many opposing the proposal.
Sen. Lincoln Fillmore’s almost 800-line bill includes many changes, including increasing 401(k) matches for some employees and postpartum leave, which didn’t draw any public objections. Changes to the state’s paid time off structure, however, brought a line of state employees to the Feb. 11 Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee hearing to testify.
State employees currently accrue vacation and sick time into separate buckets. When they leave their jobs, their unused vacation time is paid out, but their sick leave is not.
Under Fillmore’s bill, state employees would just have a single paid time off pot that they could use for any purpose. He argues it makes the state benefits package more attractive, giving employees more hours to freely use and get paid out when they leave the job.
The bill also reduces the total number of paid time off hours employees earn each pay period. Currently, Fillmore said, employees earn four sick hours each period. Under the bill, two of those hours would go to the new single paid leave pot, and the other two hours would go away.
“So that's about a 25% reduction in leave for most employees,” Fillmore said. “But again, it increases the compensable leave, and the majority of state employees don't use that leave on an annual basis anyway.”
If the bill passes, current state employees wouldn’t lose their existing sick time balance.
The bill would also increase the number of hours an employee can carry forward to a new year.
Marvin Dodge, executive director of the Utah Department of Government Operations, said that, on average, only six of the state’s 25,000 employees use every hour of their sick leave every year.
Several state employees said they didn’t want this change. They see this as a loss of 52 hours of sick time each year.
Speaking for the Utah Public Employees Association Board of Directors, Korey Holdaway said the organization asked its members about the bill. Most of the responses were negative. Holdaway said employees saw it as “yet another example of an … overall benefit reduction to the detriment of employment.”
“To be fair, there are elements of this bill that make improvements, but on its whole, employees see this as a negative,” Holdaway said.
State employee Lisa Ipsen told the committee the bill hurts employees like her.
“For those of us managing chronic illness, our sick leave is not a perk or vacation. It is a vital lifeline,” she said. “Currently, I'm forced to ration my hours, calculating every minute, just to ensure I can survive for an upcoming necessary surgery.”
“This bill proposes you take a week away from me every year that could be my recovery time,” Ipsen said, calling the proposal a “health tax on your most vulnerable employees.”
Another state employee, Matthew Morris, said he had a traumatic brain injury due to a bike crash and was his family's only source of income. He was able to use the sick time he'd banked over the years to cover his salary, instead of trying to navigate short-term disability paperwork. The state’s short-term disability pays for 60% of a person’s paycheck, but they’d have to use paid time off to cover the other 40%.
He asked lawmakers to add a “no worse off clause” to the bill to guarantee that total leave hours are not reduced.
“If leave modernization benefits employees, that clause costs nothing,” Morris said.
Other employees supported the proposed changes.
Ashley Carter said she doesn’t get sick often and has often wished she could use her sick leave for other purposes. The bill would give her more usable leave hours, which she said would incentivize her to continue working for the state.
Charlie Vandel said the current system has the unintended consequence of incentivizing employees to use sick days when they’re not actually sick, “because they feel like they’ve earned it.” He said that has the negative effect of causing burnout on certain teams if they’re short-staffed.
The bill was unanimously passed out of committee and heads to the Senate floor. While all four present members voted in favor, some suggested tweaks.
Republican Committee Chair Sen. Dan McCay told the public that “just because someone has a long-term chronic illness doesn't mean they're not a valuable employee at the same time. And I want you to know that we recognize that.”
