An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 8 – Leaves And Absences

3. N OTICE A ND R ECORDKEEPING The employee should provide reasonable advance notice, verbal or written, to the employer. 1056 While there are no set guidelines under the law, the school’s rules governing planned absences should be referred to in conjunction with this leave. Employers must provide each employee upon hire with written notice of the employee’s rights under the Paid Sick Leave law. 1057 Schools must also display a poster (available from the Labor Commissioner) containing information about the Paid Sick Leave law. 1058 Finally, employers must also provide written notice of the amount of paid sick days available on an employee’s itemized wage statement or on a separate document with the employee’s payment of wages. 1059 4. A BILITY TO O BTAIN A D OCTOR ’ S N OTE T O V ERIFY E MPLOYEE ’ S N EED TO U SE S ICK L EAVE The Paid Sick Leave law is silent on whether employers can request verification of the need to use paid sick leave or verification of the amount of paid sick leave needed as a condition of granting paid sick leave. The Paid Sick Leave law requires employers to provide an employee with paid sick days upon oral or written request 1060 and allows an employee to determine how much paid sick leave he or she needs to use. 1061 The law also provides that employers cannot deny an employee the right to use paid sick leave or retaliate against an employee for using such covered paid sick leave. 1062 Accordingly, an employer’s insistence on verification for paid sick leave does not come without risk of an employee claiming he or she was denied the ability to use their paid sick leave entitlement under the law. This possible inability to require verification of sick leave use would most likely only apply to the greater of the first half of the paid sick leave that an employee accrues or is front-loaded in a twelve month period, or the first twenty-four hours or three days of paid sick leave used in a twelve-month period. Any sick leave use contractually provided by an employer after that would be subject to any verification requirements imposed by the school’s internal policy. 5. C ONSEQUENCES A school that discharges or discriminates against an employee for taking leave under this law may be liable for lost wages and work benefits, as well as civil penalties. 1063 6. L OCAL S ICK L EAVE O RDINANCES It is important to be aware that the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, Santa Monica, and San Diego have passed local sick leave ordinances, which provide additional requirements over and above what California’s Paid Sick Leave law requires, and that other cities may be following suit. Employers subject to state and local paid sick leave laws must follow the stricter standard or the law that is most beneficial to the employee when there are conflicting requirements in the laws. For example, California law permits an employer to cap sick leave accrual at 48 hours, while some local ordinances require an employer to allow

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