The City of Pittsburgh is expected to enact the new Temporary COVID-19 Emergency Paid Sick Ordinance (the “Ordinance”), which provides Pittsburgh employees with a new entitlement of up to two weeks of paid time off for qualifying absences related to COVID-19. While this legislation may be well intended, it presents potentially significant challenges for employers with Pittsburgh-based workforces that have spent the past several months adapting to what seems like an ever-evolving carousel of federal, state, and local laws enacted in response to the pandemic.

With the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) set to expire on December 31, 2020, absent an extension by the federal government, the Ordinance appears to be the City’s effort to provide paid leave rights for qualifying reasons relating to COVID-19.

However, the Ordinance considerably exceeds the FFCRA in the scope of covered employers.  All Pittsburgh employers with 50 or more employees (including employers whose employees normally work in the City of Pittsburgh but are now teleworking from other locations as a result of the pandemic) are covered by the Temporary COVID-19 Emergency Paid Sick Ordinance.  By contrast, the FFCRA’s coverage was limited to only employers with fewer than 500 employees. As such, many larger employers with a workforce in Pittsburgh that were excluded from the FFCRA’s coverage will now immediately have to take steps necessary to provide for the requisite paid leave benefits. Further, even if an employer was subject to the FFCRA and previously took actions to provide for COVID-related paid leave, those employers should immediately update previously established policies to ensure compliance with the Ordinance.
Continue Reading Employers with Pittsburgh-based employees face new requirements to provide COVID-19-related paid sick leave

On September 17, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1383 (SB-1383), which significantly expands employee eligibility for family and medical leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA).

The law, which will go into effect January 1, 2021, reduces the number of employees required for an employer to be covered under the CFRA and also expands the reasons why employees may take these leaves.

Currently, private employers with 50 or more employees working in a 75-mile radius are required to provide employees with leave under the CFRA, while private employers with 20 or more employees are required to provide limited leave time for baby bonding pursuant to the New Parent Leave Act (NPLA).

SB 1383 expands the leave entitlement to cover smaller employers, requiring employers with five or more employees to provide eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave within a 12-month period for a qualifying reason. Qualifying reasons include:

  • Leave for the birth of a child of the employee or the placement of a child with an employee in connection with the adoption or foster care of the child by the employee;
  • Leave to care for a child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner who has a serious health condition;
  • Leave because of an employee’s own serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform the functions of the position of that employee, except for leave taken for disability on account of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions;
  • Leave because of a qualifying exigency related to the covered active duty or call to covered active duty of an employee’s spouse, domestic partner, child, or parent in the Armed Forces of the United States;

This list of qualifying reasons further expands leave entitlement beyond what employers are required to provide under the current CFRA and NPLA. Under SB 1383, qualified employees will be entitled to take leave to care for the serious health condition of a grandparent, grandchild, or sibling in addition to the current requirement covering an employee’s parent, child, and spouse or domestic partner.Continue Reading California expands Family Care and Medical Leave eligibility

On March 16, 2020, San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed announced a Workers and Families First Program to provide additional paid sick leave benefits for employees affected by COVID-19.  The plan includes $10 million in funding that will allow businesses to provide an additional five days of sick leave pay beyond their existing policies.

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In 2015, the City of Pittsburgh enacted the Paid Sick Days Act (the “Act”), requiring all private employers of full or part-time employees within the City of Pittsburgh to provide paid sick leave benefits as follows:

  • Employers with 15 or more employees must provide workers with up to 40 hours of paid sick time per

Last week, the Pittsburgh City Council passed the Paid Sick Days Act (the Act), which Mayor Bill Peduto is projected to sign into law shortly. The Act is expected to become effective 90 days after the mayor signs it and the city has published all notices, regulations and other associated materials required by law.

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An employee’s entitlement to holiday, and the pay he or she receives while taking holiday, has been a hot topic in the courts over the past few years.

In the case of Plumb v Duncan Print Group Ltd, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) has returned to the topic of an employee’s entitlement to holiday while on sick leave.

In 2009, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) in the cases of Stringer and Others v HM Revenue & Customs and Pereda v Madrid Movilidad established the following principles:

  • Workers who are off work on sick leave continue to accrue annual leave
  • Workers can take holiday during sick leave, however if they are unable or do not wish to do so, they can take it at a different time, even if this means carrying it over to the next holiday year

These decisions were all made under the EC Working Time Directive (“Directive”). However, they conflict with regulation 13(9) of the Working Time Regulations 1998 (“WTR”) which implements the Directive in the UK. Specifically, this provides that statutory annual leave must be taken in the same year in which it is accrued and cannot be carried over into the following leave year.

Continue Reading Holiday entitlement during sick leave – Where are we now?

The California Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014 (“Healthy Families Act”) is fully effective July 1, 2015, including the significant potential for class-action liability for non-compliance. It is critical that employers ensure that their sick leave policy is current, given the ever-developing legal guidance. We have created a helpful list of common areas of confusion with this new law.

(1) General Background on the Healthy Families Act

The Healthy Families Act provides sick leave for absences from work for: (1) the diagnosis, care, or treatment (including preventive treatment) of an existing health condition of the employee or the employee’s family member, and (2) the employee being the victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Family member is expansively defined to include children, parents, foster parents, legal guardians, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, spouses, and domestic partners.

The law requires employers to include information regarding accrual and use of sick leave with their employees’ wage statements. Further, employers must preserve these sick leave records for three years. Moreover, relevant posters and individual notices should have been posted and delivered as of January 1, 2015. New hires must also receive pertinent individual notices explaining their rights under the Healthy Families Act.

(2) Employees Must Provide “Reasonable” Notice.

The Healthy Families Act limits employers to requiring only “reasonable advance notification” of employee use of sick leave. Where unforeseeable, an employer may only require notice when “practicable.”Continue Reading California Sick Leave To Go into Effect July 1 – Be Aware of These Common Traps

UK: The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has provided important clarification on the annual leave entitlement under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (WTR) of workers (including employees) who are off work on long-term sick leave.

In the case of Fraser v Southwest London St George’s Mental Health Trust, the EAT has decided that:

  • a worker on long-term sick leave must request annual leave in line with the requirements of the WTR in order to be entitled to be paid for it;
  • a worker is entitled to be paid in lieu of accrued but untaken holiday when employment terminates, but only in respect of leave accrued during the leave year in which employment terminates. Accrued but untaken annual leave from previous leave years does not carry forward for the purposes of the payment in lieu entitlement where no request to take such leave was made by the worker; and
  • there is no duty on the employer to make a worker aware that the WTR rules operate in this way.

The decision provides welcome clarification to employers facing holiday-pay claims from workers on long-term sick leave on how to calculate annual leave. It is now clear that such workers are not entitled to be paid unless they requested annual leave during the relevant leave year. The EAT commented that it may seem artificial for an employee who is not at work to have to give notice in this way, but in the EAT’s view that “merely reflects the artificiality of a period of long term sickness counting as holiday at all”.Continue Reading UK: Workers required to request holiday whilst on sick leave in order to qualify for holiday pay

In Pereda v Madrid Movilidad SA, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) has decided that where a worker is sick during a period of pre-planned annual leave, annual leave must be granted to him for a different period and if he is prevented from taking it during the current holiday year, he can carry it forward to the next one. This judgment follows on from the recent and highly publicised conjoined cases of Schultz-Hoff and Stringer, which established that a worker on sick leave accrues annual leave whilst off sick but it is for Member States to decide whether a worker can take their annual leave during a period of sick leave. The upshot of these decisions appears to be that employees can choose to do what suits them best – if on long term sick leave, they can elect to take paid annual leave, but if they are sick whilst on paid annual leave, they can elect to postpone paid annual leave and take it later even if that means having to postpone it to the next holiday year. Pereda represents a very worrying development for employers as it opens the door to abuse because unscrupulous employees will be able to re-classify parts of their holiday as sick leave on their word alone.
Continue Reading Workers entitled to postpone annual leave if they fall sick