Employment Alert: California Paid Sick Leave Starts July 1, 2015

Are you ready? California’s mandated sick leave for all employees pursuant to the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act takes effect July 1, 2015.

An employer without a paid sick leave or PTO policy must adopt a sick leave policy immediately to ensure full compliance. Employers with paid sick leave policies and/or PTO policies must carefully review them to ensure full compliance with the requirements of the new statute.

Requirements:

• Full-time, part-time, temporary and seasonal employees who work in California for thirty or more days in a year are eligible.
• Accrued sick leave is available after 90 days of employment upon the employee’s oral or written request.
• Sick leave will accrue at the rate of 1 hour of benefit for each 30 hours worked up to a maximum accrual of 48 hours or block vesting of at least 24 hours each year.
• All relevant records must be maintained for a period of three years and be available for review by the Labor Commissioner and your employees.
• Display mandated poster and ensure that employees receive notice of the amount of available paid leave benefit each payday.
• Your wage theft prevention act notification must include information regarding the availability of paid sick leave.
• The definition of family is very broad.
• A separating employee’s unused accrued sick leave need not be cashed out. It must, however, be restored to that employee if he/she returns to the employer within one year of separation.

For more information, contact Stephen Lanctot at slanctot@coblentzlaw.com, Susan Jamison at sjamison@coblentzlaw.com or Charmaine Yu at cyu@coblentzlaw.com.