MA has a Paid Family Medical Leave Act as of Jan 2021 so I've had to look into this question a bit. It looks like NY's Paid Leave laws are very different though, so you'd need to get in touch with someone in your HR department to get the specifics on what the law is that they're referencing and how it's being interpreted. I'd also ask that person to lay out exactly what the PI is responsible for and for how long - if what's being paid out is the employee's sick/vacation time minus their weekly disability pay that's different from being required to continue to pay their full salary until the leave is over, since typically staff have less PTO time available than the up to 26 weeks covered under FMLA.

Once you know the actual amount that your organization is potentially responsible for, how it's covered is a combination of your institutional policy and the availability of other funds to support the project. State law is unlikely to cover that if you're not a state school. If your institution requires that the leave be paid at the department level, rather than having a pool of funds available to support them centrally, then the options are to pay it either on the grant or from non-grant funds. If you pay it on the grant, then you'd be paying both salaries for a period of time and may not have either the funds or the budget flexibility to do that. I'd be surprised if your organization had an issue with paying both if the funds were available, but stranger things have happened.

MA state law requires us to pay 80% of salary as paid leave (or pay into the state-level program) and staff can take sick and vacation time to supplement that to 100%. With paid leave lasting up to 26 weeks the impact to the department could be significant without a centrally-funded pool.

I know next to nothing about NY state laws but I'm happy to talk at a general level off-list.

Katie Walker | Associate Director, Finance & Administration | Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Boston University | College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College
xxxxxx@bu.edu  |  www.bu.edu  | 940 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215

________________________________________

Hi all:
 
A PI and I have a question: Our PI's research tech had to take a leave. He was told that their salary would have to be paid from his (non-federal) grant minus the tech's disability until they return. He was told he couldn't have someone fill in as we'd have to pay both the replacement's salary and the tech's (minus disability) off the grant, and that it's "state law."
 
We are aware the position or equivalent does have to be available for the tech when they return; however, is what he was told true and "where does it say that"?
 
Thanks!
 
Sunita M. Chowfin, CRA
IRB Administrator
Grants and Contracts Administrator
Office of Research and Scholarly Activity
Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
106 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, NY 12208
Cell (temporary): (518) 423-9887
mailto:xxxxxx@acphs.edu