[Updated 2/10/22] New Year, New Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Law

California Governor Gavin Newsom officially announced this week that an agreement has been reached to reactivate California’s COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave. The California Senate and Assembly will likely be voting on this next week before sending the proposed new law to its final destination on Governor Newsom’s desk. The expectation is that this law will pass.
As of today, there is no set timeline or date when, if passed, this law will go into effect, but we do know that, when it does, it will be retroactive back to January 01, 2022.
Although we are currently awaiting the specific details to be finalized, some tentative details that have been shared include the following:
- The Supplemental Paid Sick Leave would be in effect through September 30, 2022.
- The law would apply to businesses with 26 or more employees.
- The agreement includes a proposal to restore business tax credits to offset the employer’s Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Expenses.
- Employees would be entitled to the Supplemental Paid Sick Leave when having to take care of themselves or a family-member with COVID-19.
- Full-time employees would be entitled to up to 80 hours of paid time off while part-time workers would be eligible for paid leave equal to the number of hours they typically work in a week. Employees may be required to show proof of positive test to be entitled to the full bank of hours.
What this means for employers is that the time is now to begin looking back to determine which employees were off work due to COVID-19 since January 1st of this year because the Supplemental Paid Sick Leave wages will be owed retroactively to those employees. In addition, employees who used their regularly accrued paid sick leave or any other type of accrued paid leave (e.g., vacation, PTO) will likely need to have those hours reinstated into their respective buckets of accrued time.
Once the law goes into effect, Holden Law Group will ensure we blog on it immediately to keep you up-to-date. In the interim, we recommend you begin auditing your time off records to determine which employees required time off due to COVID-19 and begin to track any COVID-19 sick time taken between now and the passage of the law.
[[UPDATE]]
After this blog was originally posted, California Governor Gavin Newsom officially signed Senate Bill (SB) 114 as expected. The new bill reactivates California’s COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave for 2022. The Supplemental Paid Sick Leave becomes effective February 19, 2022, 10 days after the bill was signed. Please note, the statute will retroactively apply starting January 1, 2022 and is currently set to expire September 30, 2022. Also, the new law only applies to businesses with 26 or more employees.
Here at Holden Law Group, we want to make sure we keep our clients informed. We will be sending out a more comprehensive newsletter by next week diving into the details of the new Supplemental Paid Sick Leave. Please make sure you are subscribed to our newsletters to make sure you stay up to date and we are always here to help if you have any questions in the meantime.