NY Disability Benefits--Who's Covered

People tend to come to me with all their questions--especially when it comes to insurance. Even my father-in-law with whom I have disagreements with all the time rather come to me for assistance than his son the lawyer, (benefits law no less).

A co-worker of mine is a contractor. She is from another country and this is her first job in the U.S. She is about to have a baby. So she called her company who is situated in another state that does not have disability laws and asked them about being paid while she is out on maternity leave. They told her she gets no pay. She asked our department's secretary, and was told she gets nothing. Then she came to me. She knows I tend to know everything as I'm always helping her. I tend to be a wealth of useless information, (but it's not really useless as I know more than businesses and others want me to know).

I told her wait a minute. You are a New York employee. I asked her if she gets a W-2 form at the end of the year or a 1099 self-employed form. She said she gets a W-2, but turned down all health benefits offered by her employer as she's covered through her husband. I told her she is entitled to New York Disability benefits from her employer and they have to have insurance in place for that. If they don't, they have to pay her directly. This amounts to $170 a week. I gave her the URL's of government sites that specifically point out she's covered.

She sent the URL's to her employer. Now they are standing up and taking notice. They had no idea this law was in place. They have hundreds, if not thousands, of employees worldwide, but they did not know about this New York law. They do not specifically have an office in New York, but they do have employees in New York.

Well ignorance of the law is no excuse--and that too is a law.

As long as I am discussing this, I would like to point out that although New York State has a law making it mandatory that companies have New York Disability Benefits Insurance in place for employees, they also have an exclusion--and that is:

A New York State government department does not have to have this insurance and their own employees are not covered. I had to state this travesty. It's mind boggling that this is the case. Shame on them.

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Regards,

Helene Solinga