Updated FAQs on CA’s New Sick Leave Law Now Available
Now that the dust has settled and employers have had a chance to be aware of and to familiarize themselves with the new paid sick leave requirements in California, questions regarding implementation of the new law were bound to surface.
As we announced in an earlier publication, starting on January 1, 2024, Senate Bill 616 requires employers to generally provide 5 days or 40 hours of paid sick leave to their employees. In order to assist employers with this new transition, the Labor Commissioner has published a new series of FAQs on its website. Among these FAQs, two key transition questions have been posed and answered and may be helpful to list here as guidance for your business:
If an employer uses an accrual method and capped an employee’s yearly use of leave at 3 days or 24 hours, what must an employer do to comply with the law on January 1, 2024?
If an employer uses an annual start date other than January 1 and implements a 12‑month use cap, that cap must change to 40 hours or 5 days on January 1, 2024. For example, if an employer uses the 12-month period of May 1 - April 30 and implements a cap and an employee used 24 hours or three days before January 1, 2024, the employer must allow the employee to use an additional 2 days or 16 hours before April 30 if the employee has accrued that additional leave.
If an employer utilized the “up-front” method prior to January 1, 2024 and provided an employee with 3 days or 24 hours of leave on the employee’s anniversary date during the year, what must an employer do to comply with the law on January 1, 2024?
The employer has the choice to frontload the two additional days on January 1, 2024 or move the measurement of the yearly period to January 1, 2024 and frontload five days. For example, if an employee started on May 1, 2021 and the employer used that anniversary date to frontload 3 days or 24 hours on May 1, 2023, the employer may either provide 2 days or 16 hours on January 1, 2024 and keep the May 1 date to frontload or can “reset” the frontload date to January 1, 2024 and provide the employee 5 days or 40 hours then.
In addition to the newly updated FAQs, the Labor Commissioner has updated the paid sick leave poster which all employers should make sure to post and has published the new 2810.5 employee notice with revised sick leave information (see our separate article detailing the new employee notice template).
An additional impetus to prevent delay in implementing the new sick leave law in your workplace is a reminder that recent court rulings have held that California paid sick leave law violations may also be enforced under Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) class action lawsuits. Thus, it is of the essence that employers review the new sick leave FAQs and work with knowledgeable and capable attorneys such as those at Rosasco Law Group APC to make updates to your handbooks and payroll procedures to be ready for the New Year.
