In the July issue of Business Briefs we published an article about Paid Sick Leave for many employees, a proposed new law which was then working its way through the legislature.

Now it’s law: on September 10, 2014 the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 (“HWHFA”) was enacted as part of the California Labor Code. It provides employees who, on or after July 1, 2015, work in California for 30 or more days within a year from the commencement of employment are entitled to paid sick days for prescribed purposes, to be accrued at a rate of no less than one hour for every 30 hours worked. For a full-time employee (40 hours/week), that amounts to more than 8 ½ days of paid sick leave.

However, the employee is not permitted to take more than 24 hours/year of paid sick leave, and the employer is not required to accrue more than 8 ½ hours per employee.

No, we did not write this stuff: Groucho Marx did.

Under the HWHFA an employee is entitled to use accrued sick days beginning on the ninetieth day of employment. The HWHFA permits an employer to limit an employee’s use of paid sick days to 24 hours or 3 days in each year of employment, even while accrual continues up to 8+ days.

The new law will raise a variety of issues for employers:

• If the employer’s policy requires advanced notice before an employee takes a sick day, since the statute prevents retaliation against any employee for using or requesting sick leave, an employee who fails to give notice cannot be disciplined for the failure to give
  notice.
• Sick pay is at the employee’s hourly wage. However, that is not always easy to compute. The rate will fluctuate if the employee has different hourly pay rates or is paid commission in the 90 days before the sick leave is take. Each paid sick day (or hour) must be
  calculated by dividing the employee’s total wages (not including premium pay), by the employee’s total hours worked in the full pay periods of the prior 90 days. This can play havoc with calculations should commissions be paid early or late.
• Many non-union employers already have written Paid Time Off policies (PTO policies). PTO policies generally do not differentiate between sick days, vacation, holidays, Family Medical Leave Act leave, etc. The PTO policies were originally likely to have been adopted to relieve the employer from calculating pay for different types of leaves. In fact, most PTO policies do not require a cause, without a change in those policies employees may be entitled to an additional three days of paid sick leave in addition to PTO under the employer’s PTO policy.
• The new law has new record keeping requirements that may not comport with the employer’s existing record-keeping policies.

HWHFA is just one the new measures recently signed into law that have a significant effect on the employer/employee relationship.

Employers may want to take a few aspirin and send a copy of their employee policies to legal counsel for updates and legal compliance review in light of these legislated changes in employer obligations.

If you’d like to discuss how Israel & Samuels LLP can be of help to you in sorting what you have to do to “stay within the law,” call us to discuss at 925.482.0067.

The information presented is not intended to be, and does not constitute, “legal advice.” Because each situation varies, and only brief summary information is provided here, you should not use this information as a basis for action unless you have independently verified with your own counsel that it applies to your particular situation.