Title
Amend Personnel Rule 15, Leaves of Absence (Ordinance S-44112)
Description
Request City Council approval of amendments to City of Phoenix Personnel Rule 15, Leaves of Absence. This action extends the period for existing rules for the use of Earned Paid Sick Leave by an additional 12 months to Dec. 31, 2018, and adopts a first phase adjustment to the City's leave policies streamlining and simplifying employees' use of Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
Report
Summary
As a result of voter approval of Proposition 206, the City Council directed the City Manager to consult with employee unions and associations. The City Manager's Office formed a Sick Leave Work Group with representatives from all employee unions and associations, management staff from various departments, and Human Resources staff to implement specific provisions of the new State law and simplify the City's sick leave policies. Work group representatives participated in 13 meetings from August through October and developed a series of draft recommendations for the City Manager's consideration.
The first phase of the proposed amendments simplifies leave codes used for leave qualifying under FMLA (Attachment A). Current City policy states that employees who qualify for FMLA for themselves must use sick leave; employees who qualify for FMLA for a relative must use vacation leave. The current policy also states that employees must use a combination of sick and vacation leave for the birth, adoption or fostering of a child. This change would allow employees to choose to use their sick or vacation for any FMLA qualifying leave, and simplify the FMLA leave codes from two codes to one code. These proposed amendments would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018 and were supported unanimously by the work group.
The work group has several other areas of focus, including implementing the use of Earned Paid Sick Time as defined in the new State law. On July 6, 2017, the City Council approved an interim policy to allow employees to use up to 40 hours of Earned Paid Sick Time per year, as defined in the law. Since the law has only been in effect for five months, there currently is not enough data available to determine if Earned Paid Sick Time usage has an impact on employee leave use, department operations and service to the public. Therefore, the City Manager is recommending that Earned Paid Sick Time remain at 40 hours per year in accordance with State law for an additional 12 months, until Dec. 31, 2018. This will provide a full year of data for the work group to consider in developing recommendations on this and other items for revision before next December.
Public Outreach
A public meeting was conducted by the Human Resources Department on Nov. 16, 2017, to formally solicit comments on the proposed amendments.
Department
Responsible Department
This item is submitted by Acting Deputy City Manager Toni Maccarone and the Human Resources Department.