Paid family leave, granting rule-making authority, and making appropriations. (FE)

Under the bill, family leave benefits are payable beginning on the first day of the second week of family leave and are payable for each subsequent day of family leave. If, however, family leave benefits become payable on any day after the first three weeks of an employee's family leave, family leave benefits are also payable with respect to the first week of the employee's family leave. No family leave benefits are payable for any period of family leave in which the employee is substituting paid or unpaid leave of any other type provided by the employer or in which the employee is receiving unemployment benefits or worker's compensation benefits.

The bill requires each employee to contribute to the fund an amount equal to 0.09 percent of the employee's wages in 2015, an amount equal to 0.12 percent of the employee's wages in 2016, and, in 2017 and subsequent years, a percentage of the employee's wages, as determined by DWD, that is sufficient to obtain a total contribution to the fund from all employees equal to 125 percent of the family leave benefits paid during the preceding year plus 100 percent of the cost of administering the payment of those benefits during the preceding year, less the balance in the fund as of December 31 of the preceding year. The bill requires DWD to collect those contributions from the employee's employer in the same manner as DWD collects contributions to the unemployment reserve fund under current law.

Finally, the bill permits an employee whose claim for family leave benefits is denied by DWD to request a hearing on the denial and requires DWD to process the request for a hearing in the same manner that requests for hearing on unemployment insurance claims are processed under current law. If DWD pays family leave benefits to an employee and later discovers that the payment was made in error or pays family leave benefits to a person who made a false statement or representation to obtain benefits that are payable to another person, the bill permits DWD to recover the erroneous payment in the same manner that DWD recovers erroneous payments of unemployment insurance benefits under current law.