State of Hawaii Sick Leave Policy: TDI, Family Leave, and Job Protection

Hawaii sick leave law does not require private employers to provide paid sick days. What state law does give you is partial wage replacement through Temporary Disability Insurance when you can’t work because of a non-work-related illness or injury, and up to four weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave under the Hawaii Family Leave Law when you need to care for certain family members. Federal law adds another layer on top for larger employers.

No Paid Sick Leave Is Required in Hawaii

This trips up a lot of workers, so it’s worth stating plainly: Hawaii has no law requiring private employers to give you paid sick days. Many employers offer them anyway, but that’s a benefit, not a mandate.

If your employer does offer sick leave, state law requires the policy to be provided to you in writing or posted somewhere accessible.¹ The policy itself — how you earn days, when you can use them, what happens to unused time — is set by the employer.

Because there’s no paid sick day mandate, the real protections come from two separate programs. Temporary Disability Insurance handles wage replacement when you personally are sick or injured. The Hawaii Family Leave Law handles job protection when a family member has a serious health condition. They cover different situations and have different rules.

Temporary Disability Insurance When You’re Sick or Injured

Hawaii is one of the few states that requires employers to carry Temporary Disability Insurance. TDI partially replaces your wages when you can’t work due to a non-work-related sickness or injury, including pregnancy.² Work-related injuries go through workers’ compensation instead. If you get sick or hurt off the clock, TDI is the program you’ll use.

Who Qualifies

To be eligible, you must have worked at least 14 weeks in Hawaii during the 52 weeks before your disability began. In each of those 14 weeks, you must have been paid for 20 or more hours and earned at least $400. The weeks don’t have to be consecutive or with the same employer, but you do need to be currently employed when the disability starts.²

How Much It Pays

A standard statutory TDI plan pays 58% of your average weekly wages, up to a weekly maximum. For 2026, that maximum is $871 per week, which caps out for employees earning more than roughly $1,500 weekly.³

There’s a seven-consecutive-day waiting period. Benefits start on the eighth day of disability and can continue for up to 26 weeks.⁴

How to File a Claim

Tell your employer as soon as you know you can’t work, and ask for Form TDI-45. You fill out the claimant section, your doctor certifies the disability, and your employer completes their portion. The completed form goes to your employer’s TDI insurance carrier, unless the employer is self-insured. File within 90 days of when the disability period starts.⁴

Who Pays

Your employer can provide TDI by buying coverage from an authorized carrier, self-insuring with state approval, or through a collective bargaining agreement offering at least equivalent benefits. The employer can pay the full cost or share it with employees. If they share it, your contribution cannot exceed 0.5% of your weekly wages.²

Hawaii Family Leave Law for Caring for Family

The Hawaii Family Leave Law (HFLL) applies to employers with 100 or more employees who worked at least 20 calendar weeks in the current or preceding year. If you work for a covered employer and have been there at least six consecutive months, you’re entitled to up to four weeks of unpaid, job-protected family leave per calendar year.⁵

You can use HFLL leave for two reasons: the birth or adoption of your child, or to care for a family member with a serious health condition. The definition of family is broader than under federal law. Covered relationships include your child, spouse, reciprocal beneficiary, sibling, grandchild, or parent. You can take the leave intermittently, but unused time does not carry over — it resets each calendar year.⁶

One important boundary: the HFLL does not cover leave for your own serious health condition. That’s what TDI and, for larger employers, the federal FMLA are for.

Using Paid Leave During HFLL

HFLL leave itself is unpaid, but you can choose to substitute accrued paid leave to cover part or all of the four weeks. The choice is yours. Your employer cannot force you to burn a specific type of paid leave for family leave purposes unless their general policy already requires it. The law also specifically entitles you to use up to 10 days of accrued sick leave for family leave, provided that sick leave is available under the employer’s own policy.⁵

If Your Employer Has Fewer Than 100 Employees

The HFLL does not apply.⁵ A smaller employer may still offer leave voluntarily, and you may still qualify for federal FMLA if that law’s own size threshold is met.

How State and Federal Leave Fit Together

The federal Family and Medical Leave Act covers employers with 50 or more employees and gives eligible workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave in a 12-month period. To qualify, you must have worked for the employer at least 12 months, logged at least 1,250 hours in the previous 12 months, and work at a site with 50 or more employees within 75 miles.⁷

When you’re eligible for both, HFLL and FMLA leave run concurrently. Your four HFLL weeks count against your 12 FMLA weeks, so the practical picture is four weeks of HFLL plus up to eight additional FMLA weeks for the same qualifying reason.⁸

The FMLA also covers your own serious health condition, which the HFLL does not. So if you need extended time off for a personal illness, FMLA generally provides the job protection while TDI provides the wage replacement. If your family situation involves a sibling, grandchild, or reciprocal beneficiary, only the HFLL covers you, because the FMLA’s definition of family doesn’t reach those relationships.

Job Protection and Retaliation

While you’re on approved HFLL leave, your employer must hold your job. You have the right to return to the same position or an equivalent one, with the seniority and benefits you had accrued before leaving. Your employer cannot retaliate against you for asking for or using family leave.

Retaliation is broader than firing. It includes cutting your hours, reducing pay, demoting you, reassigning you to unfavorable shifts, imposing harsher working conditions, or making the environment so bad that a reasonable person would quit. Threats made before you exercise a right also count. If your employer responds to a leave request with any of these, that’s a potential claim regardless of how the employer labels it.

When the ADA Extends Leave Further

If you have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, your employer may have to provide additional unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation even after your HFLL and FMLA time is used up. This applies to employers with 15 or more employees. The EEOC has stated that employers must consider modifying leave policies and granting leave beyond a standard policy when an employee with a disability needs it, unless doing so would create an undue hardship.⁹ Running out of statutory leave does not automatically end an employer’s obligation.

Filing a Complaint

The Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations enforces both TDI and HFLL. If you believe your rights have been violated, you can file a complaint with the DLIR, which has a formal process for investigating and resolving leave disputes.¹⁰ If the complaint isn’t resolved administratively, you can receive a notice of right to sue and take the matter to court.

Available remedies include reinstatement, back pay for lost wages and benefits, coverage of legal fees, and injunctive relief ordering the employer to fix its policies going forward. Separately, employers who fail to secure required TDI coverage face enforcement action by the Disability Compensation Division.²

1
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Vacation and Sick Leave
2
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. About Temporary Disability Insurance
3
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. 2026 Maximum Weekly Wage Base and Maximum Weekly Benefit
4
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Frequently Asked Questions About Temporary Disability Insurance
5
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Hawaii Family Leave Law Frequently Asked Questions
6
Justia Law. Hawaii Code 398-3 – Family Leave Requirement
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act
8
Department of Human Resources Development. Family and Medical Leave
9
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employer-Provided Leave and the Americans with Disabilities Act
10
Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Hawaii Administrative Rules 12-27 – Administration and Enforcement of the Family Leave Law