As many of you already know, California has a new paid sick leave that took effect on July 1st of this year. I previously blogged about this new law, and its requirements for California employers, here.
But the state’s new sick leave law left many questions unanswered. So, yesterday California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law, AB 304, that clarifies a few provisions of the new paid sick leave law —
1. To be eligible under the new law, an employee must work for the same employer within California for at least 30 days;
2. An employer may provide for employee sick leave accrual on a basis other than 1 hour for every 30 hours worked, so long as the accrual is “on a regular basis” and results in the employee having at least 24 hours of accrued sick leave available by the 120th calendar day of employment;
3. An employer may limit an employee’s use of paid sick leave to 24 hours or 3 days in each year of employment, or calendar year, or 12-month period;
4. For purposes of calculating the rate of pay in order to determine wages owed to an non-exempt employee when sick leave is taken, the employer is allowed to use one of two calculation options:
a. Paid sick time shall be calculated in the same manner as the regular rate of pay for the workweek in which the employee uses paid sick time, whether or not the employee actually works overtime in that workweek; or
b. Paid sick time shall be calculated by dividing the employee’s total wages, not including overtime premium pay, by the employee’s total hours worked in the full pay periods of the prior 90 days of employment
5. For purposes of calculating the rate of pay in order to determine wages owed to an exempt employee when sick leave is taken, the employer shall calculate the rate of pay “in the same manner as the employer calculates wages for other forms of paid leave time.”
6. Employers who offer unlimited paid sick leave may satisfy the notice requirements to employees by indicating the words “unlimited” on the pay stub (rather than having to show the total hours accrued);
7. Employers’ record-keeping requirements under the new law do not include maintaining documents showing the purpose for which an employee used paid sick leave.
You can read the full text of AB 304 here.