In this article, we are going to be talking about some basic reminders that employers need to remember when it comes to the California Paid Sick Leave Law.
Because this new law is so complex; we are going to make this easy for all California Employers to understand.
One of the main questions that CES Today gets when it comes to this new California Labor Lawrevolves around the accrual rate. Leave it to California to makes this difficult.
- The default accrual rate is one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Should you decide to use another accrual rate that is fine as long as the employee has accrued the 24 hours of paid leave by day 120 of employment, or each calendar year, or each 12-month period.
If you do use the accrual method then, you do have to keep track of the paid sick leave time that the employee has accrued. You must also set up a cap on the accrual. The default cap is that an employee may accrue up to six days per year but yet can only access three days on any given year. After the three days, the employee must wait until the next year to use any of that.
- At California Employer’s Services, we are encouraging employers to simply use what is called the banking method. The banking method means that on the first of every year the employee automatically gets added three days for their sick leave bank.
Once this is done the employer does not have to worry about either the cap or the accrual method. Crisp and clean and simple. Should the employee leave the company with any sick days on the books the employer does not have to worry about paying them out. Sick Leave is a use it or lose situation.
- Many employers have failed to understand that they must provide notification to employees about this new law at the time of employment.
One of the ways that we help employers with this is by having the entire policy included in the employee handbook. This way every employee who comes on board has the notification in their hands. We also encourage employers to post the posting along with other state and federal postings, but should they forget at least the notification is in the employee handbook.
- Employers must review their record keeping and pay stub requirements.
California labor law requires that employers keep records about with regards to how much paid sick leave employees have earned and used each year, and these records must be kept for three years.
This information is to be kept on the employee pay stub. Should you have any questions, please give us a call we love questions.
One last thing to remember concerning this new law. There is a discrimination aspect attached that can get employers in trouble if they are not aware. Number one you can no longer have in your employee handbook a policy that says employees must work the day before and the day after a holiday. That is considered discrimination. There are other things to think about as well, but that will be news for another post.