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Home » Overtime & Minimum Wage Law » Paid Sick Leave and Paid Fam­ily Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

Paid Sick Leave and Paid Fam­ily Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

March 19, 2020 by Lisa Guerin

Begin­ning in April, many more employ­ees will be eli­gi­ble for paid sick leave and paid time off to care for chil­dren. Pres­i­dent Trump signed the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act on March 18. The paid leave pro­vi­sions will take effect by April 2, and will expire at the end of this year.

Although the law will pro­vide wel­come relief to many employ­ees, many are excluded from its pro­tec­tions, includ­ing those who work for employ­ers with at least 500 employ­ees. The law may also exclude those who work for cer­tain employ­ers with fewer than 50 employ­ees. Here are the basics.

Two Weeks of Emer­gency Paid Sick Leave

Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act, eli­gi­ble employ­ees could be paid for up to ten days of sick leave related to the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

Who Is Eli­gi­ble for Emer­gency Paid Sick Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

All gov­ern­ment employ­ees are pro­tected by the new law, as are many pri­vate employ­ees. How­ever, those who work for pri­vate employ­ers with 500 or more employ­ees are not cov­ered by the law. In addi­tion, if you are a health care provider or an emer­gency respon­der, your employer has the right to exclude you from these pro­tec­tions. Finally, the new law gives the Sec­re­tary of Labor the author­ity to exempt busi­nesses with fewer than 50 employ­ees, if com­ply­ing with the law would jeop­ar­dize the via­bil­ity of the busi­ness. Depend­ing on how this author­ity is used, many more employ­ees could lose cov­er­age under the law.

Which Con­di­tions Qual­ify for Paid Sick Leave

You are enti­tled to paid leave under the law if you fit into any of these categories:

  • You are sub­ject to a COVID-​19 quar­an­tine or iso­la­tion order issued by the fed­eral, state, or local government.
  • You have been advised to self-​quarantine due to COVID-​19 con­cerns by a health care provider.
  • You are car­ing for some­one who fits into one of the two cat­e­gories above.
  • You have symp­toms of COVID-​19 and are seek­ing diagnosis.
  • You are car­ing for a son or daugh­ter whose school or care facil­ity is closed, or whose child­care provider is unavail­able, due to COVID-​19 concerns.
  • You are expe­ri­enc­ing a con­di­tion sub­stan­tially sim­i­lar to COVID-​19, as spec­i­fied by the Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices in con­sul­ta­tion with other gov­ern­ment officials.

How Much Will You Be Paid—and for How Long?

Your leave enti­tle­ment depends on your work hours and rea­son for leave. Eli­gi­ble employ­ees are enti­tled to ten days of paid sick leave accord­ing to their usual work sched­ule. If you work full-​time, you are enti­tled to up to 80 hours of leave. Part-​time employ­ees can take up to the num­ber of hours they work, on aver­age, dur­ing a two-​week period.

The amount you are paid depends on why you need leave:

  • If you take time off because you are ill, under self-​quarantine, or sub­ject to a quar­an­tine or iso­la­tion order, you must be paid at your reg­u­lar pay rate or the applic­a­ble min­i­mum wage, whichever is more, up to a max­i­mum of $511 per day or $5,110 total.
  • If you take time off to care for a child or another per­son, or because you are suf­fer­ing from a sub­stan­tially sim­i­lar con­di­tion, you are enti­tled to be paid two-​thirds of your reg­u­lar pay rate, up to a cap of $200 per day or $2,000 total.

Up to 12 Weeks of Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave to Care for Children

The new law also expands the fed­eral Fam­ily Med­ical Leave Act (FMLA) to pro­vide paid leave for par­ents who need time off to care for a child whose school is closed or care provider is unavail­able due to a government-​declared emer­gency relat­ing to the coronavirus.

Who Is Eli­gi­ble for Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave Under the Fam­i­lies First Coro­n­avirus Act

Sim­i­lar to paid sick leave, employ­ers with 500 or more employ­ees do not have to pro­vide paid pub­lic health emer­gency leave. And the Sec­re­tary of Labor has the right to exempt busi­nesses with fewer than 50 employ­ees if pro­vid­ing the leave would threaten the business’s via­bil­ity. In addi­tion, if you are a health care provider or first respon­der, your employer can decide whether to exempt you.

But an addi­tional restric­tion applies here: Employ­ees are eli­gi­ble only if they have worked for their employer for at least 30 days. This is much more lenient than the require­ment for reg­u­lar unpaid FMLA leave, which requires at least a year of employ­ment, and at least 1,250 hours in the past year.

Which Con­di­tions Qual­ify for Pub­lic Health Emer­gency Leave

You may take pub­lic health emer­gency leave in only one cir­cum­stance: if you can­not work or tele­work because you are car­ing for your son or daugh­ter whose school or care provider is closed or unavail­able because of a COVID-​19 pub­lic health emer­gency. If you are sick or your work­place is closed, you don’t qual­ify for leave under this pro­vi­sion. (The Depart­ment of Labor has pub­lished infor­ma­tion on how the reg­u­lar FMLA applies to COVID-​19 related absences for other reasons.)

How Much Will You Be Paid for Emer­gency Leave – and for How Long?

The first ten days of pub­lic health emer­gency leave are unpaid, although you may use (or your employer may require you to use) any accrued paid leave you may have dur­ing that time. After ten days, you are enti­tled to be paid two-​thirds of your usual pay, up to a cap of $200 per day or $10,000 total. You may take up to 12 weeks of pub­lic health emer­gency leave, at your usual work schedule.

Get­ting Your Job Back

The FMLA requires employ­ers to restore employ­ees to their job once their leave is through, with a few excep­tions. If you take pub­lic health emer­gency leave, employ­ers with fewer than 25 employ­ees have a bit more lee­way. Your employer does not have to give you back your job if all of the fol­low­ing are true:

  • Your posi­tion no longer exists due to eco­nomic or oper­a­tional changes caused by the COVID-​19 emergency.
  • Your employer makes rea­son­able efforts to restore you to an equiv­a­lent position.
  • If those efforts fail, your employer makes rea­son­able efforts to con­tact you if an equiv­a­lent posi­tion becomes avail­able in the year after your need for leave ends.

The paid leave pro­vi­sions are brand new, and we’ll learn more soon about how they will be inter­preted and enforced. For now, how­ever, at least some employ­ees will get some relief from the huge finan­cial toll of the coro­n­avirus emergency.

More Infor­ma­tion

To learn more about work­ers’ rights in your state, see Legal Consumer’s wage and hour law learn­ing cen­ter.

If you’ve already lost your job and want to learn more about unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits in your state, see our unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits learn­ing cen­ter.

Filed Under: Overtime & Minimum Wage Law Tagged With: coronavirus, employee, employer, sick leave

About Lisa Guerin

Lisa Guerin has covered employment law topics for Legal Consumer since 2014. After getting her law degree from Berkeley Law, she worked in government, public interest, and private practice, specializing in employment law. She was a legal editor and author at Nolo for many years, where she wrote or contributed to more than a dozen books, mostly on employment issues. She volunteers with groups that help shelter and rescue dogs, and she enjoys hiking with her own Very Good Boy in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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