New state law extending paid sick leave tied to COVID-19 kicks in.
Here’s what California workers are now entitled to under a new COVID-19 law.
After certain federal and state measures expired Jan. 1, many workers in California were left with just three days of mandated paid sick leave for the year.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “recommends that people who are exposed to COVID-19 quarantine for 14 days, this is not nearly enough,” said Katherine Wutchiett, an attorney with Legal Aid at Work. “We were seeing workers who were having to choose between going to work sick and endangering their customers and co-workers, or staying home but risking their jobs and their income.”
The situation changed Monday, when California’s 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave extension took effect. The law gives full-time employees of businesses with more than 25 workers access to 80 hours of paid time off for virus-related reasons.
Here’s a look at how this affects workers and employers.
What are workers entitled to under the new law?
People who cannot work on-site or remotely for reasons related to COVID-19 are entitled to the paid sick leave if their employer has more than 25 employees.
This includes — but is not limited to — workers who must quarantine due to COVID-19, those who are caring for a quarantining family member and those who are attending a vaccination appointment or sidelined by vaccine-related symptoms. “A strength of [the law] is that people are allowed to use this for a variety of reasons related to COVID-19,” Wutchiett said.
The amount of paid leave varies based on an employee’s work schedule. Employees are entitled to 80 hours of
COVID-19 leave if they are considered full time or if they worked or were scheduled to work an average of 40 hours a week at minimum in the two weeks before they take the leave. Active firefighters may be entitled to more.
Part-time employees who work variable hours are entitled to take 14 times the average number of hours they worked each day for the employer in the six months before their leave, provided they’ve worked for the employer for more than 14 days.
Newly hired part-time workers with variable hours are able to take the number of hours that they worked in the previous two weeks as part of 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave.
Independent contractors are not entitled to this paid leave.
The right to the paid sick leave covers the period from Jan. 1 through Sept. 30 of this year. This means employees who took qualifying leave early in the year can request retroactive payment.
Employees are entitled to the same pay rate they get for other paid leave, up to a maximum of $511 a day and $5,110 as a whole under the new law.
What about workers whose employers have 25 employees or fewer?
Workers at companies with 25 employees or fewer are not entitled to the paid sick leave. “There’s no perfect solution for them,” Wutchiett said. However, “there’s a web of different protections that could be used to fill in those gaps.”
For example, workers who become exposed to the coronavirus may be able to get emergency temporary standard exclusion pay, Wutchiett said. “That’s really the only way somebody can get full pay.”
Otherwise, a worker may be able to get partial pay through programs such as state disability insurance and paid family leave, she said, though they’re not ideal solutions. “Somebody has to decide, ‘Can I afford to lose 40% of my pay?’ And the answer for everybody isn’t necessarily yes.”
What if workers have trouble getting what they’re entitled to under the new law?
If an employer refuses to allow an eligible employee to take leave or refuses to pay them for the leave, the employee can file a claim or labor law violation report with the California labor commissioner’s office. Employees can also contact the labor commissioner’s office with any concerns about retaliation.
Groups such as Legal Aid at Work offer free legal advice over the phone to lowwage workers. “We’ve gotten thousands of calls with people who have questions about their rights at work, and a lot of them have been related to COVID paid sick leave,” Wutchiett said.
Wutchiett also recommends that employees print out guidance issued by the labor commissioner’s office to provide their employer. “I always recommend sharing links, or printing out pages ... to educate them and put them on notice of what they’re required to do.”
What are employers obligated to do?
As of Monday, employers with more than 25 employees must provide 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave, including retroactive payments for qualifying leave taken as early as Jan. 1 of this year.
Employers are obligated to make the leave available immediately upon the employee’s oral or written request and must provide payment for the leave no later than the payday for the next regular payroll period after the employee took the leave.
Employers must make retroactive payments only if the worker makes an oral or written request.
The retroactive payment must be made by the payday for the next full pay period after the worker requests payment, and the employer must indicate how many 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick leave hours are left to the worker on the person’s itemized wage statement.
This paid sick leave must be made available in addition to regular paid sick leave, and employers are required to list it separately from regular paid sick leave on employees’ itemized pay stubs or in separate writing when wages are paid.
Employers are obligated to display a California Department of Industrial Relations poster explaining information about the COVID-19 paid sick leave in a noticeable area of their workplace. It can be sent electronically if the workplace is operating remotely.
How large a burden does this place on employers?
The new paid sick leave requirement is challenging for employers, said Benjamin Ebbink, a partner at law firm Fisher & Phillips.
One issue, Ebbink said, is the relatively short period of time employers have had to come into compliance with the rules. “If you haven’t been subject to some type of paid sick leave like this, and you’re starting from zero and trying to come up to speed, it’s just not a lot of time.”
In addition, Ebbink points to the retroactive payments as a potential problem area for businesses. “Employers, going back in time, may or may not have done a very good job of documenting the reasons why the employee was out. And trying to reconstruct that to see whether it meets one of the qualified reasons is going to be a challenge.”
The federal government offers businesses a payroll tax credit for the leave, but the credit may not offset all of the expense, Ebbink said.
“There’s a couple of caveats,” he said. For example, “the qualifying reasons where you’re caring for someone else, like caring for a family member, or caring for a child, because the schools are closed, those are capped at $200 a day” rather than $511 a day.
Have a question about work, business or finances during the COVID-19 pandemic, or tips for coping that you’d like to share? Send us an email at californiainc@latimes.com.