Legal Brief California’s New Paid Sick Leave Law in Effect By Gage Dungy, Partner at Liebert, Cassidy, Whitmore
California’s new Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 (Paid Sick Leave Law or Assembly Bill 1522) is upon us. The law went into effect July 1, 2015 for most employees who do not already receive paid sick leave or other paid time off. What we do know about the law: • For those employees who did not receive any paid sick leave (e.g., temporary, part-time, seasonal, etc.) prior, special districts needed to begin providing paid sick leave accruals on July 1, 2015. The only relevant exception to this law for special districts are for any employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement that already provides for paid sick leave, sets an employee wage rate of at least 30 percent of the state minimum wage, and has binding arbitration for any employee disputes over the paid sick leave (e.g., binding grievance arbitration). • The default method of providing paid sick leave accruals is for an employee to accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. While a district can limit the amount of paid sick leave used by an employee to three days/24 hours (whichever is greater) in a 12-month period, the law provides that an employee can continue to accrue to an ongoing accrual cap of six days/48 hours (whichever is greater) which will then carryover each 12-month period. 26
• The alternative method for providing paid sick leave accruals is to “frontload” three days/24 hours of paid sick leave up front on July 1, 2015 for current employees and on the date of hire for new employees going forward, and again at the beginning of each subsequent 12-month period. Because the paid sick leave is provided up front under this frontload method, the other accrual and carry-over requirements do not apply. • An employee is not eligible to begin using paid sick leave until the 90th day of employment. This 90 day time period began to run on January 1, 2015. Therefore, current employees who have been employed for over 90 days on July 1, 2015 will be entitled to use paid sick leave going forward as accrued. • Paid sick leave can be used for the diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition of, or preventative care for an employee or an employee’s family member (parent, child, spouse, registered domestic partner, parent-in-law, sibling, grandchild or grandparent). Paid sick leave can also be used for an employee who is a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking as provided in Labor Code sections 230-230.1. • For districts who already provide paid sick leave/paid time off for their employees, the Paid Sick Leave law will not likely provide additional leave to those employees, but additional restrictions will likely apply for the first three days or 24 hours in a 12-month period (e.g., the entitlement to allow use for familial relationships not typically permitted by sick leave provisions). • An employee shall provide reasonable advance notification of any foreseeable use of paid sick leave (e.g., scheduled doctor’s appointment). If the need to use paid sick leave is unforeseeable, the employee shall provide notice to the employer as soon as is practicable. However, the Labor Commissioner has