Need more sick leave due to COVID? New California plan would offer extra time amid omicron

California political leaders on Tuesday announced plans to require businesses to provide up to two weeks of supplemental paid sick leave for workers who catch COVID-19 or have to take time off to care for a loved one, reinstating a policy they let expire in September.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate President Pro Tem Toni G. Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced an agreement on a framework to ensure employees continue to have access to COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave through September 30, 2022.

Under the proposal, all workers at businesses with 26 or more employees would get 40 hours of paid sick leave for COVID-19. The leave can’t be used to get the vaccine or recover from vaccine side effects. In those instances, workers get 24 hours of leave.

Workers will get another 40 hours if the worker or another family member tests positive after the first 40 hours are exhausted.

Employers must pay for and provide the test, but if a worker refuses to take or show a positive COVID-19 test result, no additional leave is granted.

The leave program will be applied retroactively to Jan. 1 through Sept. 30, likely a significant help to those workers affected by the omicron surge.

“By extending sick leave to frontline workers with COVID and providing support for California businesses, we can help protect the health of our workforce, while also ensuring that businesses and our economy are able to thrive,” the three Democrats said in a joint statement.

The announcement comes months after Newsom and lawmakers let a previous supplemental paid leave program expire in late September. Business leaders at that time urged the Legislature not to extend the leave program, saying it would be too expensive for businesses to bear as federal tax credits ran out.

Now, amid a surge caused by the highly-transmissible omicron variant, lawmakers are renewing the state’s commitment to supplemental sick leave.

The supplemental leave will likely be accomplished through early budget actions. Lawmakers also plan to take early action to restore business tax credits that were limited during the initial pandemic recession period in 2020, enact tax relief for recipients of federal relief grants for restaurants and shuttered venues, and approve additional funding for the Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program.

John Kabateck, CA State Director for National Federation of Independent Business, said while small business supports the general health of all those that make up their workforce, any employer paid leave is difficult for small businesses to afford.

“Small business is still reeling from government closures, reduced commerce and inflationary pricing,” he said in an email. “If this is the policy direction of our leaders, we would have hoped some the state’s surplus would have been used to subsidize small businesses for the cost of COVID leave.”

Worker advocates and labor groups praised lawmakers for taking action to protect the state’s workforce.

“Make no mistake: today’s agreement happened because workers who are on the front lines of the pandemic demanded safety for ourselves, our families and our communities,” said Bob Schoonover, President of SEIU California. “We spoke up about the impossible choices we faced without enough sick time to recover from COVID-19 without our kids going hungry. We know we can’t wait for employers to keep us safe - we have to advocate for ourselves, and Governor Newsom and legislators listened.”

Art Pulaski, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said paid sick leave is one of the “most potent weapons we have in the arsenal to protect these brave workers and slow the spread of this deadly disease.”

“California’s unions are fighting tooth-and-nail to ensure that no worker has to choose between going to work sick or feeding her family,” he said in a statement. “Not only does this measure protect workers, it’s vital to tamping down the surge and keeping schools and businesses open”