Leave/Time Off

3. Leave/Time Off-

Sick time (*a must-have section*)

Your employee manual should discuss your sick time policies. Currently, Maryland agricultural employers with fewer than fifteen employees are exempt from the Healthy Working Families Act (MHWFA).  In this case, these employers would only need to provide unpaid sick leave.  For any employer with more than fifteen employees, the employer would be required to provide paid sick leave.

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In Delaware, the Healthy Delaware Families Act (HDFA) will provide certain employees with sick and safe leave funded through employer and employee contributions.  The contributions will begin in 2025, and use of the leave will begin in 2026.  

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You can set a sick leave policy beyond what state law allows, but if you do, it is important that employers comply with the policy they have set.  If the employee is accruing leave, you should indicate how much sick time your employees accrue at what rate, whether it is paid or unpaid, and the permissible uses of sick time. You should also indicate who employees should report illnesses to and how much advance notice you expect employees to give when calling in sick or requesting to use sick time in non-emergency situations.

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Sample language:

All employees at the farm earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours they work (beginning on your first day of work), up to a maximum of 40 hours per year. You can begin using this earned sick time 106 days after starting work. Earned sick time can be used when you or your child, spouse, parent, or a parent of your spouse is sick, has a medical or mental health appointment, or has to address the effects of domestic violence. You can use 64 hours of paid sick leave in one year and accrue no more than 64 hours in one calendar year.  If you do not use all of your earned sick time by the end of the year, up to 40 hours will be carried over into the next year. If you are sick but have not earned sick time, please let us know, and we will make every effort to accommodate your needs. Your health and the health of our customers are important to us, so our goal is that you will never need to come to work while sick.

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You (or a proxy if you cannot call for health reasons) must notify your supervisor before using sick time, except in an emergency. If you will be late or absent due to illness, your supervisor should be notified as soon as possible, no later than 7 am on that workday. You should communicate directly with your supervisor via phone, email, or text; communicating with another employee is insufficient. If you miss more than three consecutive workdays we may ask you for a doctor’s note or other documentation of your illness.

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Family and medical leave (*a must-have section*)

This section should outline employees’ rights to family and medical leave, explain the permissible uses of family and medical leave, and lay out your farm’s expectations of employees about when and how they should notify you of upcoming non-emergency leave. New paid family and medical leave laws in Delaware and Maryland significantly increase employees’ rights to family and medical leave. The sample language under sick leave already includes family and medical leave.

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Law to Keep in Mind:

Maryland and Delaware employers must comply with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  Most agricultural employees are not covered by the FMLA since the law generally applies to employers with 50 or more employees. The FMLA entitles employees to take an absence of 12 weeks unpaid leave for serious health conditions, family care, birth or adoption, and for a serious injury of active family members.  To be eligible for FMLA coverage, an individual must have worked at least 12 months and 1,250 work hours in the year immediately preceding their request for leave. Additionally, they must be employed at a site with a minimum of 50 workers within a 75-mile proximity. 

Additionally, Maryland’s Parental Leave Act (PLA) mandates employers with 15 to 49 employees to provide six weeks of unpaid parental leave benefits within any 12-month period for the purposes of childbirth, adoption, or foster placement of a child. 

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The Maryland Department of Labor will launch a new paid family and medical leave system effective 2026. The law will guarantee that employees can take leave from their jobs to attend to their own needs or those of a family member while still being eligible to receive a weekly benefit of up to $1,000 for a maximum of 12 weeks.

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Bereavement Leave (optional)

Maryland’s Flexible Leave Act  (MFLA)  applies to employers with more than 15 employees for each working day in each of 20 or more calendar weeks in the current or preceding calendar year. Under MFLA, employees are allowed to utilize paid leave for bereavement reasons associated with the passing of a close family member. Delaware does not have a similar law for private employees. While, under MFLA, many agricultural employers may be exempt from providing bereavement leave due to a smaller number of employees, you may consider including a bereavement leave policy. This sets reasonable expectations and guidelines so that supervisors are not left handling it on a case-by-case basis, which can leave room for accusations of special treatment.

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Sample language:

Bereavement time is provided in the case of the death of immediate family members. Immediate family members include parents, siblings, grandparents, children, spouse/domestic partners, and spouse/domestic partners' immediate family.  You will be granted three days of bereavement time off with pay for immediate family members. For any other members of your family, you will be granted one day of bereavement time with pay. You must get your supervisor’s approval for time off for any other bereavement time, but this time off will be without pay.

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Other leave (*a must-have section*)

This section should outline other types of leave permitted or required at your farm that you want to highlight as available to your employees. It is always important to make sure that the leave policies you include in your manual do not conflict with any of your employees’ rights to leave (explained below).

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Jury duty leave. Delaware and Maryland require you to provide unpaid leave to employees for jury duty service.  Employers cannot require employees to use their annual, sick, or vacation leave to cover their absence when fulfilling legal duties, such as jury duty.

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Voting leave. Delaware and Maryland both require that employers provide at least 2 hours of paid leave for an employee to vote.

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Witness leave. In Maryland,  an employee who must serve as a witness in a legal action can obtain unpaid leave for testifying and cannot be punished if they give notice to their employer. In Delaware employers must allow employees who are victims of crimes, a victim’s guardian, and a victim’s legal representative to take leave. Employees may take leave to assist in preparing for criminal proceedings at the prosecutor's request, to attend a criminal proceeding if it is essential to safeguard the interests of the victim, and to attend a criminal proceeding after receiving a subpoena.

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Military leave. The federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) gives employees the right to take job-protected leave from their job to perform uniformed military service, provided that their service has been honorable and that they 1) give you advance written or verbal notice of their service if possible, 2) have five years or less of cumulative service in the uniformed services while working for you, and 3) return to work or apply for reemployment promptly after they finish their service. Following their service, such employees must be restored to the job and benefits they would have attained if they had not been absent due to military service or, in some cases, a comparable job. Employers are required to provide covered employees a notice of rights, benefits, and obligations under the act.

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Domestic violence leave. Under the MHWFA, as discussed earlier with sick leave, agricultural employers would be exempt from paying for leave because of domestic violence but would need to provide unpaid sick leave.  In Delaware, the Discrimination in Employment Act (DDEA) mandates that employers must provide reasonable accommodations for victims of domestic violence. These accommodations may involve adjusting schedules and allowing the use of accrued leave. 

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Vacation and holidays (*a must-have section*)

Describe your farm’s vacation/holiday policy. Does the farm operate on holidays? Are some holiday days off? Do some holidays offer a higher pay rate or other type of compensation? Is there paid or unpaid vacation time? If so, who do you need to request time from, and how much notice is expected? Are there certain times of year that it’s preferable to the farm for employees to take vacations? Is there a length of employment before employees begin earning vacation time? At what rate is vacation time earned for full-time and part-time employees? Does it carry over (up to a certain amount), is there a cap on the amount of time that can be accrued, and/or do you have a “use it or lose it” policy?

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Laws to keep in mind:
You can choose whether to offer paid or unpaid vacation, no state law in either state requires it. Note that if you offer paid vacation time, this is considered part of employee wages in Maryland and Delaware, so employees must be paid for any vacation time that they accrued but did not use during their period of employment. If an employee quits, they must be paid all accrued wages as part of the next pay cycle; if terminated, they must be paid in full on their last day of employment. Thus, the most common practice is for employers to have their employees accrue any paid vacation time every month – or with each pay period – instead of on an annual basis.

 

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