New sick leave policies impact seasonal businesses

In November, Alaska residents voted and passed Ballot Measure One. A measure that increases the minimum wage over the next three years, requires employers to provide sick leave, and prohibits employers from holding mandatory meetings to express political or religious opinions. The new policies went into effect on Tuesday, July 1st.

One of the new regulations regarding sick leave mandates that an organization with fewer than 15 employees must provide 40 hours of sick leave. Once the organization has 15 or more employees, however, it must provide 56 hours. According to Natalie Paris, the owner of Three Rivers Bookkeeping, some seasonal local businesses she works with are confused about what the new policy means for them.

“A lot of businesses in Talkeetna and even the state of Alaska will operate on a smaller employee base in the wintertime and then increase that above 15 people in the summertime,” she said, “So there’s a lot of confusion of, well, what do we do?”

She added that these seasonal businesses often hire people part-time for three or four months, which adds even more confusion.

“By the end of the summer, they may have only accrued four hours of sick leave,” she said, “And then there’s the confusion that goes into building your policy on cashing those out. Do you cash them out? Do you not cash them out?”

Paris said larger companies and businesses typically already have sick leave policies in place, but for smaller businesses, the change is more dramatic.

“The smaller businesses, primarily what we have in Talkeetna, weren’t required and never really did have much of this. So this is completely new for them,” she said, “Added administrative costs, added payroll costs, payroll taxes, it could have a huge impact financially for some small businesses.”

There are proposed changes to these policies that would expand exemptions and address these questions regarding seasonal workers. The public comment period on these new policies is open until the end of July.