California Governor Gavin Newsom signed several new employment laws impacting California employees. Unless otherwise specified, those laws, which are summarized below, took effect on January 1, 2024.
S.B. 616: Sick Leave Expanded from Three to Five Days & Procedural Guarantees Extend to CBA Employees
Senate Bill (S.B.) 616 amends the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 (HWHFA), the statewide paid sick and safe leave law, by increasing the required paid sick leave that an employer must provide each year from three days (or 24 hours) to five days (or 40 hours, whichever is greater). This means that an employee working 10-hour days will be entitled to use at minimum 50 hours of paid sick leave (this example assumes that the employee has earned or received upfront their full amount of leave).
The new law keeps the requirement that leave must be
accrued at a minimum rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked and the
requirement for employers using an alternate accrual method that at least 24
hours of accrued leave be provided by the 120th day of employment. S.B. 616
adds an additional requirement that employers must provide at least 40 hours of
accrued sick leave by the 200th day of employment.
Employers may still limit an employee’s annual usage of
paid sick leave, but the annual usage cap increased from 24 hours or three days
to 40 hours or five days. Existing law requires that accrued sick leave be
carried over, but allows employers to set accrual caps. Under S.B. 616,
employers may cap paid sick leave accrual at 80 hours or ten days (previously
48 hours or six days).
S.B. 616
also extends some procedural protections of paid sick leave law to
nonconstruction industry employees covered under a collective bargaining
agreement (CBA). The law previously excluded these CBA employees. Under the
amended law, these employees now must be allowed to take sick leave for all the
same reasons as covered employees (i.e., for the “[d]iagnosis, care, treatment
of an existing health condition of, or preventive care for, an employee or an
employee’s family member”). Employers cannot require these employees to find a
replacement worker and cannot retaliate against them for sick leave
usage.
The new law however still excludes individuals employed by
an air carrier as a flight deck or cabin crew member (if they receive
compensated time off equivalent to paid sick leave law requirements). Other
exempt groups include retired annuitants working for governmental entities,
railroad employees, and construction employees covered by a CBA with specified
provisions.
For more information about California's amended paid sick leave law, please consult the FAQ shared by the California Labor Commissioner's Office (located here, updated December 21, 2023).
S.B. 848: Five Days for Reproductive Loss
The five days of protected leave are not required to be taken consecutively but should be taken within three months of the event. If an employee experiences more than one “reproductive loss event” in a 12-month period, the employer must provide up to 20 days of leave within that period. The reproductive leave is not required to be paid leave, but employees may use any acquired sick, vacation, or other paid time off.
The law adds Section 12945.6 to the Government Code and applies to private employers with five or more employees and to California public employers. The protections extend to any person who would have been a parent had the reproductive event been successful. Unlike existing bereavement law that carves out exemptions for CBA employees, S.B. 848 provides no exemption for CBA employees.
S.B. 848 explicitly characterizes reproductive leave loss as a “separate and distinct right” from any right under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which grants legal protections from discrimination, retaliation, and harassment in the workplace. Employers that retaliate against an employee because of the employee’s exercise of the right to reproductive loss leave commit an unlawful employment practice. S.B. 848 also makes it an unlawful employment practice for an employer to deny, interfere with, or restrain an employee’s request to take reproductive loss leave. The new law also contains confidentiality provisions intended to protect the privacy rights of employees experiencing reproductive loss events.
Previous to S.B. 848, the law remained unclear as to whether reproductive losses qualified as a type of leave protected under existing bereavement law. Existing bereavement law requires employers to provide employees with at least five days of bereavement leave upon the death of a family member (Gov. Code § 12945.7.) Although the law defines “family member” to include “child,” Section 12945.7 makes no specific mention to reproductive loss being a qualifying event subject to bereavement law protections. S.B. 848 clearly addresses this question.
S.B. 553: Labor Union Ability to Apply for Workplace Restraining Order
Approved by the Governor in September 2023 and commencing January 2025, S.B. 553 authorizes a bargaining unit representative to seek a temporary restraining order (TRO) on behalf of a bargaining unit member that has suffered unlawful violence or a credible threat of violence from any individual. Existing law already allows an employer to seek a TRO under similar circumstances, and S.B. 553 expands that provision to include unit representatives. At the discretion of the court, a bargaining unit representative may also seek a TRO on behalf of any number of other employees at the workplace, and if appropriate, on behalf of other employees at other workplaces of the employer.
S.B. 553
also requires that before filing any petition seeking a TRO, an employer or
bargaining unit representative must provide the injured employee an opportunity
to decline to be named in the TRO. An employee’s request not to be named in the
TRO does not prohibit the employer or the unit representative from seeking the
TRO on behalf of other employees at the workplace or at other workplaces of the
employer.
Existing law, the California
Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973, imposes safety responsibilities on
employers and employees, including the requirement that an employer establish
and implement an effective injury prevention program and makes violations of
these provisions a crime. S.B. 553 requires an employer to establish, at all
times in all work areas, an effective workplace violence prevention plan. The
new provisions also require that the employer keep a violent incident log for
every “workplace violence incident,” that the employer provide effective
workplace violence prevention training, and that the employer maintain records
related to its workplace violence protection plan.
The law defines “credible threat of
violence” as a “knowing and willful statement or course of conduct that would
place a reasonable person in fear for their safety, or the safety of their
immediate family, and that serves no legitimate purpose.” “Unlawful violence”
is defined as “any assault or battery, or stalking as prohibited in Section
646.9 of the Penal Code, but shall not include lawful acts of self-defense or
defense of others.”
Please find links to the laws
discussed above here:
