What you need to know about new COVID-19 leave law - The San Diego Union-Tribune
California’s 2022 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave (SPSL) law requires employers with 26 or more employees to provide their employees with up to 80 hours of COVID-19-related paid leave. The law provides for up to 40 hours of paid leave at the employee’s regular rate of pay for COVID-19-related isolation and vaccination and for caring for a child whose school or place of care is closed. The additional bank of 40 hours of leave is available only when an employee, or family member for whom the employee provides care, tests positive for COVID-19.
Employee eligibility for SPSL is retroactive to Jan. 1 and expires on Sept. 30. The employer’s obligation to pay benefits started on Feb. 19. An employee is eligible for a maximum of $511 per day or $5,110 total for SPSL.
Employers must publicly post a notice from the Labor Commissioner describing the rights and duties under the SPSL law, just as employers must post notice of the state’s 2014 paid sick leave law. If employees do not frequent a physical workplace, the SPSL notice may be disseminated electronically.
The California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) recently posted answers to frequently asked questions.
Eligibility for first bank of leave
An employee is entitled to up to 40 hours of paid leave if the employee is unable to work or telework for any of these reasons:
- The employee is subject to quarantine or isolation by order or guidance of a federal, state, or local public health officer, for example due to exposure to someone with COVID-19.
- The employee’s health care provider has advised the employee to isolate or quarantine due to COVID-19.
- The employee is attending an appointment for themselves or a family member to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or booster.
- The employee is experiencing symptoms, or caring for a family member with symptoms, from a COVID-19 vaccine that prevents the employee from working or teleworking.
- The employee is experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and is seeking a medical diagnosis.
- The employee is caring for a family member subject to quarantine or isolation.
- The employee is caring for a child “whose school or place of care is closed or otherwise unavailable for reasons related to COVID-19 on the premises.”
For each vaccination-related leave, an employer may limit the total COVID-19 supplemental paid leave to three days or 24 hours unless the employee provides verification from a health care provider that the employee or family member under the employee’s care is continuing to experience vaccine-related symptoms.
Employees who generally work 40 hours a week are entitled to up to the full 40 hours of leave. The law provides a different way of calculating the amount of leave to which employees who work less than 40 hours per week are entitled.
Eligibility for second bank of leave
An employee is entitled to additional SPSL, up to the amount to which the employee is eligible under the first category of leave, if the employee, or a family member for whom the employee is providing care, tests positive for COVID-19. An employer may condition payment of this category of leave on the employee providing documentation of the employee’s or the family member’s positive test results. An employer may not require the employee to submit to any particular kind of diagnostic test to qualify for leave.
The employer may require an employee to submit to a subsequent test for COVID-19 — at no cost to the employee — on or after the fifth day of the positive test and provide documentation of the results of that test.
An employee need not exhaust the first bank of leave to access the second bank of leave. The FAQ provides this illustration: A full-time employee “can use 10 hours from the first bank to receive a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot and recover from symptoms, 40 hours from the second bank to care for a family member that tested positive for COVID-19, and then 30 hours from the first bank to care for a child whose daycare had closed due to COVID-19 on the premises.”
An employer may not require an employee to use any employer-provided “paid or unpaid leave, paid time off, or vacation time” before the employee uses COVID-19 SPSL or instead of COVID-19 SPSL.
An employee taking SPSL when the law expires is entitled to take the full amount of SPSL to which the employee otherwise would have been entitled. A sure sign of our collective success against this wearisome scourge, however, will be if the need for the leave provided by this law all but expires before the law itself does.
Dan Eaton is a partner with the San Diego law firm of Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek where his practice focuses on defending and advising employers. He also is an instructor at the San Diego State University Fowler College of Business where he teaches classes in business ethics and employment law. He may be reached at [email protected]. His Twitter handle is @DanEatonlaw
source: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2022-02-28/what-you-need-to-know-about-new-covid-19-leave-law
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