Thousands of CT workers seek paid time off
More than 5,000 Connecticut workers — most of them millennials — filed applications for paid leave in the first month of the state’s new program, data shows.
The Connecticut Paid Leave Authority received 5,565 applications in December when the Connecticut Paid Family and Medical Leave Act launched. Under the program, workers can qualify for up to 12 weeks off for varying medical and family reasons, while receiving a percentage of their regular pay.
About 200 people filed applications in the first two hours of the program, according to Andrea Barton Reeves, CEO of the Connecticut Paid Leave Authority.
“We’ve had family and medical leave since the mid-1990s — it’s just never been paid,” Reeves said. “The actuaries thought we would have 85,000 claims in a given calendar year.”
With nearly 160 applications in December, New Haven had the largest number of residents seeking paid time off through the program, slightly ahead of Waterbury, Bristol and Bridgeport.
Data obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media shows 7 in 10 claims statewide were filed by women, and more than half by the millennial generation, which comprises 35 percent of the U.S. working population.
In December, just over half of the applications statewide were filed by parents for paid leave during pregnancies, deliveries and bonding time with infants. The next largest group of applications, at 36 percent of the pool, came from people seeking paid time off to recover from ailments and injuries that were not eligible for workers compensation because they were not sustained on the job.
Some of those applications cite health complications from COVID-19, according to a Connecticut Paid Leave Authority official, who noted that workers must have a health professional certify they have had an extended bout of severe symptoms for the request to be approved. The authority has yet to approve any applicant citing COVID-19 as a reason for paid leave.
The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which expired at the end of 2020, allowed workers to get paid leave in instances where exposure to COVID-19 could seriously jeopardize the health of a family member. However, tax credits continued through last September for businesses offering paid time off to workers affected by the virus.
The new Connecticut paid leave program has some employers concerned it will lead to more people taking time off, putting an additional burden on other staff already strained during the pandemic.
“Now you’ve got a program where people can be absent from the workplace up to 12 weeks every single year,” said Eric Gjede, vice president of public policy for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. “You have a reaction from some employees of, ‘well I’m darn well going to use this thing if I’m paying for it.’”
With a target of $400 million, the Connecticut Paid Leave Authority had collected through December just over $300 million from employers via a 0.5 percent tax on worker earnings. Workers are required to make contributions for three months before qualifying for benefits.
Last week, the state Department of Labor approved a 1 percent “catch up” surcharge employers can pay to cover any period when they failed to forward contributions to the fund. Through early January, 124,000 employers had registered to withhold the tax from paychecks.
“We’re just trying to identify those employers that we know should be participating and are not,” Reeves said. “That, we are still working on.”
Employees of companies that already offer paid leave are exempt from the tax, if the benefits of those plans match or exceed the Connecticut Paid Family and Medical Leave Act. In a September 2021 study, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 23 percent of workers had access to paid family leave under their employer plans, with 40 percent having access to short-term disability payments covering illness and injury.
CBIA is offering its member businesses one such plan underwritten by The Hartford Financial Services Group.
“You can’t require employees to contribute any more than the state plan,” Gjede said. “It has to abide by all the same rules and it has to be approved by the authority as equivalent in every way, shape or form.”
As the case with unemployment insurance, self-employed workers in Connecticut are exempt from paying the tax, but can opt-in to have the option of filing for paid leave when needing a legitimate break from their job that curtails their income.
For a Connecticut minimum-wage worker making $13 an hour, the program disburses 95 percent of that amount. A formula is then used for those making more than minimum wage that reduces the percentage. The state has an online benefits calculator, which computed a benefit of $780 a week — or less than $41,000 annually — for a person making Connecticut’s median household income of about $78,450.
Reeves said the biggest misconception so far has been the assumption that workers can draw 100 percent of their normal earnings from the program. The Paid Leave Authority is launching this week a new round of online workshops with sessions for workers, business owners and employment professionals needing to learn more about the program rules.
Part-time workers are eligible for paid leave if they earned $2,325 in any quarter of the preceding year, or just under $200 a week on average.
The Connecticut Paid Leave Authority hired Aflac to handle claims by workers taking paid leave. Reeves said part of Aflac’s appeal was its experience in flagging claims that appear fraudulent.
“We really wanted to work with an organization that had a long and deep history in managing disability claims, because that’s about as close as you can get to that,” Reeves said. “They have a special investigations unit — and there are 150 people who work just for Connecticut.”