LA Mayor Signs Modified COVID-19 Paid Sick Leave Order

By Dave Simpson
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Law360 (April 9, 2020, 7:08 PM EDT) -- Los Angeles has adopted a supplemental paid sick leave policy, providing workers at larger companies with time off for COVID-19-related issues in an attempt to cover workers who were not included under the federal paid sick leave legislation.

Mayor Eric Garcetti on Tuesday signed the emergency order, which will provide up to 80 hours of additional paid sick time to L.A.-based companies with either 500 employees in the city or 2,000 nationally. Los Angeles City Council had adopted a paid sick leave policy last month, but Garcetti's order loosened the council's provisions, creating exemptions for some business.

Garcetti stressed a need to avoid imposing "excessive burdens" on companies while also avoiding staffing shortages at hospitals.

"In my judgment, the modifications put into place by this emergency order strike a necessary balance of these interests, and I hope the City Council will consider amending its ordinance with these provisions in the near future," he said in a release.

The council's ordinance had provided the supplemental paid leave for any company with 500 employees regardless of where the workers were based, but Garcetti shifted the number to 2,000 nationally, keeping the 500-employee cap for Los Angeles.

The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which President Trump signed last month, guarantees workers paid time off for reasons related to the virus, including caring for children whose schools have closed. But that bill leaves out a sizable chunk of the workforce by carving out large employers with 500 or more employees, hence the L.A. City Council's 500-worker benchmark.

Garcetti also added exemptions for recently opened businesses and those that were forced to close for at least two weeks under the COVID-19 emergency orders.

Lawmakers and the federal government have enacted a patchwork of paid sick options since the pandemic started ramping up.

The IRS said last month it was immediately implementing a recently enacted law that provides a dollar-for-dollar tax offset against payroll taxes to businesses with fewer than 500 employees that provide paid leave due to the COVID-19 virus.

Employers can take immediate advantage of the two new refundable payroll tax credits for businesses that provide coronavirus-related paid leave for workers to attend to their own health needs or to help ailing family members, according to the announcement by the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Labor. Businesses can retain funds they would otherwise pay to the IRS in payroll taxes to recoup the credit, the agency said.

New York lawmakers last month enacted a plan to safeguard workers' jobs and guarantee them some measure of paid sick time if they can't go to work because of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The details of the emergency sick leave vary depending on the size of the employer. Those with at least 100 employees must provide at least 14 days of paid sick leave "during any mandatory or precautionary order of quarantine or isolation" put in place by public health officials to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Businesses with between 11 and 99 employees must fund five days of paid sick leave and, after that, give workers access to short-term disability benefits and paid family leave. Companies with 10 or fewer employees and less than $1 million in revenue must give their workers access to paid family leave and short-term disability benefits, though they have no obligation to pay for sick leave themselves, according to the legislation.

If a business closes because of COVID-19, the individual can immediately file for unemployment insurance benefits under the legislation, which was dubbed S. 8091.

--Additional reporting by Amy Lee Rosen and Braden Campbell. Editing by Peter Rozovsky.





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