Posted on June 22nd, 2016
More bad news if you have a business in Los Angeles with employees. You may have worked really hard to make sure your Employee policies and procedures are compliant with California laws on sick leave pay but now there are separate and even more restrictive measures for employers specifically in Los Angeles.
On June 1st 2016, the city passed its own new sick leave ordinance that requires you as the employer to provide your employees with 48 hours or 6 days of paid sick per year from now on.
Its more important than ever you understand Los Angeles paid sick leave law.
You may have thought California states laws were tough enough but the city of LA is now demanding twice as much! The CA State wide law already mandates 24 hours or 3 sick days a year.
And… it gets crazier. They officially voted in the new ordinance on June 2nd 2016 but you only have until July 1st 2016 to change your policies and procedures to be in compliance with this new law!
Who Does The New Sick Pay Law Apply To?
Well first off this information specifically applies if you have a business with employees in Los Angeles. If your business is elsewhere in the state, than California state law applies. Similar to Los Angeles some other cities like San Diego and Santa Monica have their own sick leave laws, but this article is specifically to the details on the LA requirements.
Employee Accruals
Lets look at which of your employees this new city law applies to:
- If your employee worked on or after July 1st 2016 in the city of LA for your business
- If they worked for 30 or more days in a one year period
- If they worked at least 2 hours a week in LA
How does it accrue:
- Sick leave starts to accrue for your employee on their first day of employment or on July 1st 2016 (whichever is later)
- The accrual begins but the employee cannot actually use paid sick leave until their 90th day of employment
Providing Paid Sick Leave
There are two methods you can choose from to provide the paid sick leave to your employees:
- Upfront – With this option you give the employee the full 48 hours upfront at the start of the calendar year, 12 month period or beginning of each employees employment.
- As they go – With this option you provide them one hour of sick leave per 30 hours worked.
- Carry Over – For any of the sick paid leave of 48 hours your employees do not use they can carry over to the next year up to 72 hours.
If you paid careful attention to how your compliance with California state law in this area has been you will notice that there are some differences here as well.
Under the state law if you as the employer chose to use the upfront method it does not carry over into the new year. The Los Angeles city law is more restrictive and requires up to 72 hours to be carried over.
Employee Notification
So what are the employees responsibilities in all this? Well in the LA city law this of course is more favorable to the employee as well.
The employee does not need to provide “reasonable documentation” at the request of you the employer like California state law. In other words, your employee does not have to provide you a ‘Doctors note’ if you request to legitimize the absence and use their paid sick leave.
Using Sick Leave Pay
According to the State of California here are the situations when your employee is entitled to use sick pay.
- When they are sick
- When they taking care of existing condition or preventative care (for example Doctor appointments)
- When they are a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault
- If they are caring for a ‘family member’ (child, parent, spouse, partner, grandparent, grandchild or sibling)
The new LA ordinance added something pretty interesting here that could prove contentious in the future.
In addition to the situations above which you will still need to honor because its the State law, they greatly expanded who the employee could use the paid sick leave for. The state limited it to just family members. LA added this incredulous line in the definition for whom your employee you can use the sick leave for:
“for any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.”
What! So who determines what non family member is close enough to the employee that they would be the “equivalent” of a family relationship?
Of course only the employee could know that so you effectively have no say in the matter. An employee could say I’m taking a sick day to care for a friend who is like a family member to me and you will have to pay for that sick day.
Ex-Employees and Unused Sick Leave
So what about when an employee leaves your company or is terminated? Well this is one area that stayed very similar to what California state law already is. When you and your employee separate the accrued but unused sick leave does not need to be paid out to them when they leave.
However if you have an employee that leaves your company and you rehire them back in less then one year, all of their previously accrued and unused sick leave pay must be given back to them. This is one of the reasons why you need to always keep close and detailed employee records.