Arizona Employers to be Required to Provide Paid Sick Time to All Employees

Under the Fair Wages and Health Families Act, all Arizona employers will be required to provide their employees with paid sick leave beginning on July 1, 2017.

All employees (including full time, part time and temporary) should begin accruing a minimum of one hour of earned paid sick time for each 30 hours worked.

Employers with 15 or more employees can impose an accrual limit of 40 hours (or more) each year. This means that employees would stop accruing paid sick time after they had accrued a total of 40 hours per year.

Employers with fewer than 15 employees can implement a lower accrual threshold as long as employees can earn at least 24 hours of paid sick time per year.

If an employer had 15 or more employees on their payroll for any portion of a day in each of 20 calendar weeks in the current or preceding year, they should use the larger limit. Note: The 20 calendar weeks do not need to be consecutive.

New employees hired after July 1, 2017 must begin accruing paid sick leave immediately upon hire, however an employer can have a policy requiring new employees to wait 90 days after their employment start date to use the accrued paid sick time.

Employees can use their accrued paid sick time for any of the following reasons:

  1. Illness, injury or health condition of the employee or a family member;
  2. A public health emergency; and/or
  3. Missed work due to domestic violence, sexual violence, abuse or stalking.

At the time of hire, or by July 1, 2017, whichever is later, employers must provide their employees with a written notice describing the employees’ rights to accrue and use paid sick leave. A sample notice is available from the Industrial Commission by clicking here.

With each payroll employers should also provide information about the amount of paid sick leave used and the amount of paid sick leave available for use. This can either be noted on the pay stub or included as an attachment to the pay stub.

Arizona employers who already have a paid time off policy in place that meets or exceeds the requirements under the Fair Wages and Healthy Families Act are not required to provide employees with additional time off.

For more information regarding the Fair Wages and Health Families Act, click here.