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In addition to the federal government’s paid emergency leave laws, California, Colorado, and New York have enacted its own COVID-19 emergency paid leave requirements. Get all the details in this article.
Editor’s note: This article is for informational purposes and is not meant to provide legal, regulatory, accounting, or tax advice. This article was last updated October 2020.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a significant impact on the nation’s leave laws, leading to a federal law that requires 2 types of emergency paid leave for employees affected by the pandemic. Several states and local jurisdictions have enacted their own paid emergency leave requirements, often aimed at covering those employers who don’t have to comply with the federal law.
This is a listing of the new emergency leave obligations facing employers because of the coronavirus.
Federal Law
Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)
The federal law went into effect on April 1, 2020 and requires businesses with fewer than 500 workers to provide up to 80 hours of paid sick leave to full-time workers at their regular rate of pay if they can’t work because of COVID-19, including if they’ve been quarantined or have symptoms of COVID-19 and are seeking a diagnosis.
Emergency sick leave must be provided if an employee is:
Under governmental or healthcare provider orders to quarantine
Experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis
Caring for an individual that falls under one of the first 2 categories above
Caring for a child whose school is closed or child care provider is unavailable, both due to COVID-19, or
Suffering a substantially similar qualifying condition specified by the Department of Health and Human Services
Employers cannot require employees to use other paid leave before providing emergency sick leave.
The United States Department of Labor can exempt businesses with fewer than 50 employees from providing workers with paid emergency leave “when the imposition of such requirements would jeopardize the viability of the business.” About 12 million private sector employees (opens in new tab) work for companies with fewer than 50 employees.
Companies with more than 500 employees are also excluded from the paid leave mandate, according to a TIME article (opens in new tab). The same article reported about 59 million people worked for companies with more than 500 employees in 2019, and 6.5 million of those people did not have access to paid sick leave.
While federal law has excluded large employers from the FFCRA’s requirements, some cities and states have approved rules mandating emergency paid leave because of COVID-19, often aimed at the large employers not under the FFCRA’s mandate.
Employers, especially those with operations in more than one city or state, should check local and state laws — including executive orders — for COVID-19 emergency paid leave requirements.
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