California Provides Employees with Another Bucket of COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Leave

On February 9, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom approved Senate Bill 114 (“SB 114”), which entitles most California employees to a new bucket of COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave.  The law will go into effect on February 19, 2022.

California’s prior law entitling workers

No sooner has Washington enacted two major new leave laws – the Washington Paid Sick Leave Law and the Washington Paid Family and Medical Leave Law (WPFML) – than the State has found itself to be one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 outbreak.  Here is what Washington employers need to know about Paid Sick

Oregon recently passed amendments to its statewide sick time law, clearing up several areas of uncertainty for employers.  The amendments clarify that:

  • Employers may cap employees’ annual accrual of sick leave at 40 hours. The pre-amendment version of the sick leave law stated that employees had the right to “earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per year,” but also mandated that employees accrue one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked.  At the “1 for 30” rate, full-time employees would reach the 40-hour limit well before the end of the year, leading to confusion about whether they were entitled to continue accruing sick time for the remainder of the year (which would, in effect, give them more than 40 hours of annual leave).  The amendments, which expressly state that “[e]mployers may limit the number of hours of paid sick time that employees may accrue to 40 hours per year,” make clear that continued accrual beyond 40 hours is not a requirement.  Once employees have accrued 40 hours, they are done for the year, even if there are several months left in which they will not accrue any time.

Continue Reading Oregon Amends Sick Leave Law: 5 Key Clarifications

Now that the calendar has turned to 2016, this is a good time for employers in California to ensure that they are up to speed on the new laws that took effect on January 1.  Here are some of the highlights.

SB 358 (Gender Wage Differential)

Existing law already prohibits employers from paying women less

iStock_000011905991SmallOn September 10, 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 1522 (the “Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014”) and made California the second state in the nation (after Connecticut) to enact a state-wide law requiring most California employers to provide paid sick leave to employees.  This marks the latest development in a growing trend that has seen similar paid sick leave laws enacted in other jurisdictions in recent years, mostly at the city level, including in Seattle in 2012, in Portland, OR in 2013, and in Eugene, OR in 2014.

Under the California law, most California employees who work 30 or more days within a year will accrue one hour of paid sick leave at their regular rate of pay for every 30 hours worked.  The law also imposes new notice and recordkeeping requirements onto California employers.

The law allows employees to carry over accrued paid sick days from one year to the next.  Employers, however, are allowed to limit an employee’s use of paid sick days to 24 hours or three days a year and to cap accrued paid sick leave at either 48 hours or 6 days.  While an employer is not obligated to pay out accrued but unused paid sick leave at termination, if an employee separates from an employer and is rehired within one year from the date of separation, previously accrued and unused paid sick days must be reinstated.  If an employer already has a paid leave policy or paid time off policy, it is not required to provide additional paid sick days under the new law so long as its existing policy satisfies certain requirements, including making available an amount of leave that may be used for the same purposes and under the same conditions as specified in the Act.Continue Reading California Enacts State-Wide Paid Employee Sick Leave Law

Beginning September 1, 2012, the City of Seattle will require that all but the smallest employers provide paid sick leave to their Seattle employees. Sick leave mandates under the new law increase depending on the size of a company’s workforce, and employees must be allowed to use the leave for their own or their family