MA: Paid Family and Medical Leave

This summer, Massachusetts passed the state’s first Paid Family and Medical Leave Program, which will begin to take effect in 2019.

The legislation will entitle employees to “job-protected, paid leave” to care for a sick family member or child, address an employee’s own health conditions, or to address emergencies related to a family member’s military deployment.

Bowditch Attorneys outline the employee leave benefits as follows:

Under the Program, employees are entitled to job-protected, paid leave for up to 12 weeks per year to care for a sick family member or child, up to 20 weeks per year to attend to the individual’s own serious health condition, and up to 26 weeks per year to deal with an emergency related to the deployment of a family member for military service. Each employee may take a maximum of 26 weeks of leave under the Program each year.

While employers must begin contributing to the Program in 2019, employee benefits under the Program will not be disbursed to employees until 2021.

Beginning July 1, 2019, employers of all sizes “except for certain public entities” will be required to provide new employees and contractors with a written notice of their right to paid family and medical leave and to post a notice of employee rights in the workplace.

For more details on the Program’s benefits and mandatory employer contributions, please click here.


The information included in this blog post originally appeared in a publication from Bowditch Attorneys on November 21, 2018, written by Timothy P. Van Dyck and Chelsie A. Vokes.

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