New York Paid Sick Leave Law Kicks In as Federal Benefits End

New Yorkers can begin using paid state sick leave benefits Jan. 1 after similar federal benefits enacted under Congress’ first iteration of Covid-19 relief expire Thursday.

The New York State Sick Leave law, widely regarded as the nation’s most generous government-protected workers benefits program, secures paid sick leave for employees at medium and large businesses and paid or unpaid leave for those at small businesses, depending on the employer’s net annual income. The law is expected to deliver relief to a broader slate of New York workers, including lower-wage employees who were left out of the federal government’s response, observers say.

The law was signed in April as part of the state’s 2021 budget. It follows emergency legislation Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed in March guaranteeing sick leave for the state’s quarantined workers.

“Even before the coronavirus pandemic, we knew that no one should have to make the unimaginable choice between keeping their job or caring for themselves or a loved one,” Cuomo said in a statement announcing the Jan. 1 implementation date. “This public health crisis has put that need in even greater relief.”

New York’s law guarantees 56 hours of paid sick leave for workers at businesses with 100 or more employees; 40 hours for those at businesses with 99 workers or fewer and those with fewer than five employees with a net income of more than $1 million a year; and 40 hours of unpaid sick leave for workers at businesses below the total number of employees and net income thresholds.

Until now, roughly 1.3 million New Yorkers haven’t had access to paid sick leave, according to the governor’s office. Nearly one in four workers had reported being fired or threatened with termination for taking sick time.

The pandemic has laid bare a persistent equity gap determined by pay and skill, said Linda Houser, an associate professor at Widener University in Pennsylvania. Low-income workers in the U.S. typically aren’t offered paid sick or family medical leave benefits, sometimes forcing them to choose between work and health, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. Federal protections that are expiring Thursday were narrowed to exclude large employers, Houser said, meaning a majority of low-income workers were unaffected by the temporary law.

New York’s law could serve as a post-pandemic example to the remaining jurisdictions without protections in place, she added.

“This is such a great example of the way that states can be policy innovators and that the federal government sometimes lags behind but can learn lessons,” she said.

Local Changes

New York City scrambled to modify its own paid sick leave policy ahead of Friday’s effective date for the state law. The city eliminated a 120-day waiting period for benefits to take effect, enhanced reporting requirements and specified that the burden of sick leave documentation lies with employers, not their employees. There’s no waiting period for the use of accrued sick time under the state law.

Westchester County, N.Y., is the only other local jurisdiction in the state with an existing paid leave law in place.

The new state law gives preference to more generous local government or employer policies and allows them to supersede it. But that’s been a point of contention for some employers.

Tracey Levy, of Levy Employment Law in Rye, N.Y., said many of her clients already offered paid sick leave that were more generous than the state law by some measures, but didn’t go as far as the state law in other ways.

The law allows workers to take time off for the care of a “family member,” and goes on to define family members as extending to children and grandchildren. Virtually no private-sector plans extend family leave across three generations, Levy said, meaning employers who may have offered an unlimited number of sick days, for example, now believe they’re being forced to give up that benefit in order to comply with the multi-generational family leave provision.

“The state law says more generous policies should not be overridden, but the reality of implementation is that the laws are so prescriptive that you have to change your policy,” Levy said. “Employers that had unlimited paid sick leave policies find they can’t do that anymore, because then their employees would have a million reasons why they wouldn’t need to come to work.”

Levy said most of her clients have abandoned or modified their own sick leave policies to comply with the state law, even those that were, by some measures, more generous.

Federal Benefits Expire

The federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, also signed in April, furnished certain workers nationwide with up to 80 hours of paid sick leave at full pay and up to 10 weeks of qualified expanded family and medical leave at two-thirds pay. The law was extended on a voluntary basis in the form of a tax credit in the Consolidated Appropriations Act passed by Congress in December and signed by President Donald Trump.

The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division announced guidance shortly before the benefits were set to expire stating that the department will continue enforcement once mandatory protections have expired. Employers who have not yet paid employees who took time off while the law was in effect must pay their workers for that time, the guidance states. But time that was not used between April 1 and Dec. 31 won’t carry over into the new year.

The U.S. is the only wealthy country in the world without a federal paid leave policy. As of March 2020, just 20% of private-sector workers had access to paid family leave, according to recent data. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 required private-sector employers to provide job-protected unpaid leave.

President-elect Joe Biden‘s incoming administration has expressed interest in expanding the program to include paid benefits.