Loss of paid leave puts some workers in lurch

Nuguid spoke during a call Thursday that saw workers, labor leaders and state legislators call for the speedy passage of legislation that would revive the lapsed emergency sick leave.

People who were exposed to the coronavirus at work are also eligible to be paid to stay home under rules recently extended by state workplace safety regulator Cal/OSHA that could be in effect until the end of the year. State law presumes a worker with the virus was exposed at work, but companies can try to prove otherwise to avoid paying them socalled exclusion pay to stay home.

Changes that take effect this week under the extended Cal/OSHA rules require employers to pay people to stay home if they were exposed to the virus at work, but there are exceptions. People who are fully vaccinated and don’t have symptoms can keep showing up as long as they wear a mask for 14 days after being exposed to an infected person. They are also required to keep six feet away from co-workers during that period.

“The majority of those impacted by COVID have been low-income communities of color or frontline and essential workers,” said Assembly Member Wendy Carillo, D-Los Angeles, during the call. “The absence of paid sick leave now will result in situations where people will have to go to work despite health risks,” she said.

Labor leaders and legislators said they hoped to have a bill take effect by the end of this month, but there currently isn’t one being considered that would get the expanded sick leave program going again, said Kimberly Rosenberger, California government relations advocate for the Service Employees International Union.

Rosenberger said the previous bill, SB95, could provide an outline, but legislators said without federal funding for expanded sick leave, the state would have to come up with the money itself.

“There is no federal funding,” Carrillo said. She floated the idea that the state’s $46 billion budget surplus, outlined this week by Gov. Gavin Newsom, could be used to pay for sick workers to stay home.

Newsom has said he wants to spend the extra money on what his office has called the state’s “greatest existential threats,” including combating COVID-19, climate change, homelessness, wealth inequality and crime.

Newsom’s office responded to a request for comment by referring to his remarks Monday when he unveiled his proposed state budget where he called sick leave a “top priority.”

Since businesses still have to pay for some employees to stay home under the Cal/OSHA rules, an extension of the supplemental sick leave isn’t a necessity, said Ashley Hoffman, policy advocate with the California Chamber of Commerce. She said she hoped any reauthorization of the supplemental paid sick leave rules would once again exempt the smallest businesses with fewer than 26 employees and change the required paid time off from 80 hours to 40.

Hoffman said businesses are concerned about the affordability of expanded leave and workers defrauding their employers for time off, and said it could lead to “continued subsidization of people choosing to be unvaccinated,” since they would be paid to stay home if they were infected.

State law requires businesses to provide employees with three days of paid sick leave, but that time does not cover the CDC’s current recommended minimum isolation period of five days for a person infected by the virus.

Employees can still ask their employers for paid time off to recover from the virus, according to the state labor commissioner’s website.

Despite the Cal/OSHA rules covering workplaces, more protections are needed to avoid workers showing up to work sick in order to not miss out on pay, said Tia Orr, interim executive director of SEIU California,

during the call Thursday.

The Cal/OSHA rules “only cover workers infected or exposed at a given worksite,” Orr said. Those temporary rules expire this year, and a more permanent plan could do away with socalled exclusion pay altogether.

Said Orr: “We need something broader and bigger than that.”