A bill introduced in the Nebraska Legislature would make significant changes to the state’s new law requiring paid sick leave for workers, which received an overwhelming 74.56% approval from voters on the November 2024 ballot.
Paul Strommen, District 47. Legislature – 2025 Incoming Senators. November 20, 2024. Photo by Craig Chandler / University Communication.
Legislative Bill 698, introduced by freshman Senator Paul Strommen of Sidney, has two functions. First, the bill seeks to exempt several categories of workers from earning paid sick leave: namely agricultural workers, seasonal and temporary employees, and workers under the age of 16. Businesses with 10 or fewer employees would also be exempt. Second, protections put in place for workers who might face retaliation from their employers for using their paid sick leave would be removed.
Having confidently cleared the 2nd-house hurdle, ballot initiative campaign manager Jodi Lepaopao said this effort from Strommen, a former city councilman and ethanol industry leader, is “disappointing.”
“Our hope is always that lawmakers respect the will of the voters,” said Lepaopao. “They voted to overwhelmingly support this policy as it was written in November at the ballot box, so to come back and see a bill proposing significant cuts to the policy that was proposed, it’s disappointing.”
The new law is set to take effect Oct. 1, 2025. Pending any changes, employees will earn at least one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked. Small businesses (fewer than 20 weekly employees) must offer at least 40 hours of paid sick leave per year. Larger employers must offer up to 56 hours of paid sick leave each year.
The initiative was approved by voters in 89 of Nebraska’s 93 counties and a majority of voters in all 49 legislative districts.
Nebraska Appleseed, a voter advocacy non-profit headquartered in Lincoln which helped organize the ballot initiate, estimates that 250,000 working Nebraskans do not currently have access to paid sick days. They say a greater number of workers have access to paid sick days but can’t use them without fear of penalization from their employer.
On the campaign trail, ‘Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans’ signature-gathers touted support from more than 200 local Nebraska businesses who supported allowing workers to earn and use paid sick leave.
Responding to some of the assertions tacitly made in the proposal, Lepaopao said most of the 200 shops that supported their campaign would qualify as those proverbial “small businesses” which LB 698 might be trying to protect.
“They said our initiative was a modest approach to providing paid sick leave,” she said. “They thought this would be good for workers, good for them and their employee retention, and good for their local economies.” She called the notion that employers would suffer debilitating costs under this initiative “a misconception.”
In terms of exempting certain worker groups from receiving paid sick leave, Lepaopao said “our belief from the get-go was that paid sick leave is a right that should be available to all workers, regardless of the industry they work in, regardless of their age, regardless of their available work hours.”
“I was working when I was younger than 16, and I would still get sick,” she laughed. “That happens to young workers too.”
She also mentioned a topical headline which might underscore the value of paid sick leave for ag-workers. This week, the first 2025 cases of avian influenza were discovered in a backyard poultry flocks in Kearney and Nance Counties.
“These workers who were getting sick with bird flu weren’t granted paid sick leave,” she said. “That puts a strain on the industry, and the cost of eggs is going up significantly. If these workers are given paid sick leave, that’s something that can be avoided.”
Perhaps coincidental, a bill introduced this year by Sen. Dunixi Guereca of Omaha, LB 573, seeks to protect poultry industry employees from a strain of avian influenza on the rise in the Midwest. It would entitle workers to be paid if an outbreak shuts down their workplace.
LB 698 was referred to the Legislature’s Business and Labor Committee, chaired by republican Sen. Kathleen Kauth of Omaha. The bill is set for it’s first public hearing on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025.
Lepaopao says members of her campaign are planning to testify in opposition.
“We’re prepared to get engaged with community members and the 75% of people who voted in support of this policy. We need to be contacting our representatives to make sure that this does not pass. All workers in Nebraska should have the right to paid sick leave,” she said.
Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans petition organizers. June, 28, 2024. (Tom Stanton, KLIN News)