(The Center Square) – Employees in Illinois may be able to use paid leave for organ donation with a measure advancing at the statehouse.
House Bill 1616 amends the Employee Blood and Organ Donation Leave Act to allow both full-time and part-time employees to use up to 10 days of leave within a 12-month period for organ donation.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, requires employers to calculate and compensate part-time employees for organ donation leave based on their daily average pay from the previous two months of employment.
State Rep. Joyce Mason, D-Gurnee, supported the bill.
“We all know that there is a long list of people waiting for organ donations and they literally need it to save their lives. And so for those few people who are able to be living donors and literally give a part of themselves, I think that we all can do our part in compensating these part-time employees, which is very minimal, to be able to help save lives,” said Mason.
State Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, did not support the advancement of the measure.
“One of the reasons I’m going to be against it is in the last session … other bills were passed that provided for five weeks or 20 days of paid leave and 40 weeks or 200 days of unpaid leave and I just think it’s a bit much to ask our businesses at this point to provide additional paid leave, be it for a good cause or not,” said Ugaste. “I think it’s a breaking point for our businesses so I will not be supportive.”
Hoffman said the mandate would apply to businesses with 51 or more employees and that the part-time employee would have to be employed for at least six months in order to receive the benefit.
“What it [the bill] says is that what you [employer] will do is you will calculate if you’re part-time, the average daily wage over the last two months. So you’re [the employee] not going to receive full-time benefits if you only work part-time. You’ll calculate the amount as the average daily wage over the last two months,” said Hoffman.
State Rep. Brad Halbrook, R-Shelbyville, questioned Hoffman about how many hours a part-time employee would have to work in order to receive the paid time off.
“But then as far as the number of hours for a part-time employee, is that defined anywhere [in the legislation]? Would they have to have a minimum number of hours or anything or a maximum number of hours?” asked Halbrook.
“It does not address that,” answered Hoffman.
Halbrook said the bill is another burden on businesses of any size.
The bill passed out of the House Labor and Commerce Committee 18 to nine and can now be considered on the House floor.
