State lawmakers advanced a proposal Tuesday adding new restrictions to a paid sick leave law Nebraska voters approved last year and which has yet to be implemented, moving the proposed changes to the final round of debate. 

The way the voter-approved law is written, businesses with fewer than 20 weekly employees would allow those employees to accrue up to five days’ worth of paid sick leave a year, or up to seven days a year for larger businesses. An hour of leave could be earned for every 30 hours worked. 

Employees, under the ballot measure law, can use paid sick leave for themselves or a family member for mental or physical illness, injury or a health condition or for a medical diagnosis or preventive medical care. Paid sick time also could be used during a public health emergency.

LB 415 changes

LB 415 would remove the current law’s blanket sick leave requirements, letting employers offer no paid sick leave to young teens, ages 14 and 15, or to temporary, seasonal agricultural workers and workers at the state’s smallest businesses, those with 10 or fewer employees. 

Sponsoring State Sen. Beau Ballard of Lincoln said the proposed legislation intends to clarify and make the ballot measure “more feasible” and workable for businesses. 

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His bill would clarify that businesses that meet or exceed the new law would not need to change their existing leave policies, including accrual or carryover components. It also would clarify how leave can be requested and when employees could begin to accrue sick leave.

Worker advocates and union leaders have spoken out against the proposed changes as attempts to undermine the will of Nebraska voters throughout this session.

Tuesday’s debate followed an underlying theme of the session in the officially nonpartisan but GOP-dominated statehouse of lawmakers pushing back against a handful of ballot measures passed by Nebraska voters. That push has left Democratic-aligned lawmakers in the role of defending what they call the “will of the people.” The GOP has built a 33-member supermajority that sometimes makes the filibuster less effective.

“For as long as I can remember,” State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha said during the debate, “Nebraska has been doing as well as it has because you had just enough Democrats to save us from ourselves.”

Other Republican lawmakers said that they were trying to protect small businesses that could not afford paid sick leave in its voter-approved form. State Sen. Mike Jacobson of North Platte said he had received emails from small business owners in his district about the recent ballot initiatives. 

“We do live in a capitalistic society, and we are competing for employees, but there are smaller businesses out there,” Jacobson said. “In my district, they are being strapped. They can’t continue to employ people if we’re going to raise the minimum wage, have paid sick leave.” 

GOP-led maneuver exposes supermajority’s power

Throughout the debate, lawmakers, some begrudgingly, approved an amendment that would have reduced the carve-outs to businesses with five workers instead of 10 employees, and add back in the ability to sue to enforce provisions requiring paid sick leave.

It was viewed as a compromise to get some lawmakers, including State Sen. Dave “Woody” Wordekemper of Fremont and others, to vote for LB 415. As some Democratic-aligned lawmakers continued their filibuster of the proposal after the amendment’s approval,  Republicans stopped negotiating, reconsidered the amendment and voted it down. 

Jacobson led the successful push to reconsider the amendment. 

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“When we cast votes here, we’re not taking away what the voters said they wanted,” Jacobson said. “We’re making it so that it will work for small businesses and for their employers.” 

Jacobson said during the debate that Republicans are willing to bringLB 415 back to select file to add an amendment that would bring some of the ability to sue back into the bill but that lowering the size of business required to pay sick leave to five is off the table. 

Democrats speaking in opposition to the changes said more than 30,000 Nebraskans would lose paid sick leave.

Wordekemper said his continued support for the measure depends on the amendments proposed, if senators decide to bring LB 415 back to select file.

Wordekemper voted present on cloture for the bill this round, but the bill advanced with the support of State Sen. Jane Raybould of Lincoln, a Democrat who voted for the bill and cloture. His vote is unlikely to affect the outcome. Ballard said after the vote that he has enough votes for passage during final reading despite the compromise amendment blowing up. 

Voters adopted the paid sick leave ballot measure with nearly 75% of the vote in November, including majority support across all 49 legislative districts. The measure was heavily supported by Nebraska labor groups. The voter-approved paid sick leave law is set to go into effect October 1.

State Sen. George Dungan of Lincoln said lawmakers should be ashamed, adding they just “told 30,000 Nebraskans that they don’t get the opportunity for paid sick leave.”

“You didn’t like the way that people were talking after that was adopted. It sounds like perhaps you decided to gut it and strip it,” Dungan said. “That’s being vindictive.”