https://www.workplacefairness.org/final-pay#3
3. I have accrued vacation time/sick time/personal leave days that I will not use before leaving my company. Is the company required to pay me for that time?
It depends on the type of leave that you have. 24 states--Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (after one year of employment), Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming--and the District of Columbia require that your employer include any unused vacation pay that has accrued (that you would have been entitled to use) in your final paycheck.
Unless required to do so under an employment contract, collective bargaining agreement, or other legally binding agreement, an employer is not required to pay employees for accrued sick time or personal leave when they leave their employment. In this respect, accrued sick time is unlike accrued vacation time which, in some states, must be paid as part of an employee's final paycheck. Some employers do pay employees for unused sick time, possibly as an incentive for employees to not misuse sick leave. However, this practice is generally completely voluntary, unless required by a contract as discussed above.
More companies are moving to a "paid time off" (PTO) system where days off are not designated as vacation leave, sick leave, or personal leave, to give employees more flexibility and to ease the administrative burden of tracking and policing workers' use of their time off. Where this is the case, remaining PTO days are generally treated the same as vacation days under the law. These days are considered to be accrued by the employee and payable when the employee leaves the job.
Sorry, Bagels.
