Good Afternoon,

Governor Gavin Newsome recently signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1867, which requires employers with 500 or more employees to provide supplemental paid sick leave for COVID-19 related absences. The bill mandates that employers provide up to 80 hours of paid sick leave to covered full-time employees and covered part-time employees are eligible to receive an amount equal to the total number of hours they are normally scheduled to work over two weeks. This bill, which was effective as of September 19th, also allows employees to use supplemental paid sick leave before using other accrued time (sick, vacation, personal hours).

The good news is that Getty was already providing supplemental sick leave to staff. As part of our response to the COVID-19 health crisis, Getty implemented a program in March that provided an additional 112 hours of sick pay (SCP) to all employees (full-time and part-time) to be used when they exhaust their accrued sick time. In July an additional 80 hours of SCP was provided to Security and Facilities staff regularly working on site. The Getty’s supplemental sick pay program obviously provides more sick time for full-time and part-time employees than what AB 1867 currently requires.

Getty will not change the amount of SCP we provide to employees, we will continue to provide SCP as outlined above to all full-time and part-time employees. However, this new law will require us to change how we administer this additional sick pay.

Currently employees must use accrued sick time before using SCP for any medically related absence including time spent in quarantine or isolation due to COVID-19. Employees will now be able to use SCP for absences related to COVID-19 before they are required to use accrued sick time. This includes absences for any period of time that the Getty requires the employee to isolate or quarantine. Please refer to the attached revised “Pay During COVID-19 Health Crisis” for more specific instructions related to the use of Sick, Sick dependent time and SCP.

Effective this pay period and going forward, timecards should be adjusted so that any absences related to COVID-19 are coded to SCP. All other medically related absences should be recorded on the timecard as sick or sick dependent time.

For the pay period beginning on September 20, 2020 through October 3, 2020, Payroll will make the necessary adjustments so that COVID-19 related absences are coded to SCP and the corresponding accrued sick time is credited. These adjustments will be completed and reflected in the November 6, 2020 paycheck. Since these adjustments are being made in conjunction with the September 19, 2020 effective date of AB 1867, no other adjustments for the period prior to September 19th will be made.

Please don’t hesitate to contact myself or a Human Resources Specialist should you have any questions.

Thanks.

CP