Now that the economy appears to be on a slow mend, lawmakers have gotten busy adding to, and in some cases clarifying, employee rights. No sooner had California’s new sick leave law (the Health Workplaces / Healthy Families Act of 2014) taken effect on July 1, that the state legislature passed a bill to clarify and correct some glitches. AB 304 was signed by the Governor as “emergency” legislation, so it makes these changes immediately: • The sick leave law as written covered employees who work in California for 30 or more days. The new bill clarifies that this means 30 days for the same employer within a year of hire. • In the original, each employee earned an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, which sent many employers running to change their existing plans and was a challenge for payroll departments. Now, you can keep an older plan as long as employees end up with at least 8 hours of sick leave three months into a 12-month period, and have no less than 24 hours by the end of the ninth month. If the plan changes, the employer must go back to the accrual method or give employees three days (or 24 hours) at the beginning of each “year.” • Employers who use PTO wondered if they had to track sick leave separately because of the “reinstatement” provision in the law, but the new bill clarifies that if you pay out the PTO on termination, there’s nothing to reinstate if the employee is rehired within a year. • Employers who provide unlimited sick leave (yes, there are some), can just put “unlimited” on their pay stubs instead of a number. • A confusing provision concerning pay rates was simplified, but still requires a 90-day look-back period. Still confused? Wait until next year, I’m sure there’ll be another corrective bill. Meanwhile, we may end up with a federal, state and several local minimum wages, so beware if your employees drive across city limits. And federal overtime rules may change. The minimum salary to be exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act may jump from $23,660 a year to over $50,000 a year. In California it had been $37,440. If the national rules change, a supervisor earning $45,000 a year will be entitled to overtime. There is a short test for a “highly compensated” employee, which would also change from a minimum of $100,000 to over $122,000. That will impact a whole class of employers, but probably not as many in California, which doesn’t have the same exemption. The comment period on these new rules runs until mid September. California is also expanding protection to employees with disabilities. As of January, 2016, any employee who merely asks for an accommodation is now protected against retaliation. All the more reason to be careful in dealing with discrimination issues, and to get legal advice before terminating any employee. As of this writing, the Legislature had not yet gone home for summer break, so there could be more new laws coming from the governor’s desk straight to employers’ inboxes. For example, AB 465 would forbid employers from requiring their employees to use arbitration instead of a jury trial. This could run contrary to recent US Supreme Court decisions, but I’m pretty sure none of you want to be a test case. Stay tuned for another look in September. Storrow is a long-time Carlsbad attorney whose practice focuses on advising and representing employers. He can be reached at 760-929-9141 or at [email protected].