Last week, the Colorado legislature passed SB20-205, the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA). This legislation will require all Colorado employers to provide three types of paid sick leave:
- COVID-19 emergency paid sick leave
- Paid sick and safe time
- Public health emergency paid sick leave
Governor Polis is expected to sign the legislation into law. It will take effect immediately, but certain provisions will not take effect until 2021 or 2022, depending on the size of the employer. All three paid leave programs under the HWFA will apply to all private employers that have an employee who works in Colorado.
For the purposes of this legislation, an “employee” is any person, including a migratory laborer, performing labor or services for an employer’s benefit. The law does not apply to independent contractors or to employees subject to the federal Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act. The HWFA does not apply to employees covered by a CBA in effect on the law’s effective date if the CBA provides for equivalent or more generous paid sick leave for employees the CBA covers.
COVID-19 Emergency Paid Sick Leave (CO-EPSL)
- This benefit will be in effect whenever the Governor signs the bill into law through December 31, 2020.
- Employers with more than 500 or more employees will now be required to comply with the EPSLA but they will not receive any tax relief.
- Employers with 499 or fewer employees that federal law allows excluding certain employees from the EPSLA will need to comply as well.
Paid Sick & Safe Time (PSST)
The PSST mandate will initially apply to employers with 16 or more employees beginning on January 1, 2021, and then apply to all employers on January 1, 2022. Among some of the guidelines of this benefit include but is not limited to:
- Employees must accrue at least one hour of PSST for every 30 hours they work, up to a maximum of 48 hours per year.
- Alternatively, at the beginning of the year, employers can provide an amount of PSST that meets or exceeds the law’s requirements. Unlike many paid sick and safe time laws, the HWFA does not address whether frontloading relieves employers of their carry-over obligation, so we hope the CDLE addresses this issue.
- Generally, up to 48 hours of accrued, unused PSST hours carries forward to a subsequent year.
- Employers with a paid leave policy are not required to provide additional paid sick leave to employees if they: 1) make available an amount of paid leave sufficient to meet the PSST, and 2) allow employees to use paid leave for the same purposes and under the same conditions as provided by the HWFA.
- Employers must allow employees to use leave upon an employee’s request. That request may be made orally, in writing, electronically, or by any other means acceptable to the employer. An employer may provide a written policy that contains reasonable procedures for employees to provide notice but cannot deny leave based on non-compliance with the policy.
- Employers must pay leave at the same hourly rate or salary and with the same benefits including health care benefits as the employee normally earns during hours worked.
- Employers need not cash out unused PSST when employment ends.
Public Health Emergency Leave (PHEL)
In the event of a Public emergency, employers must supplement an employee’s PSST to ensure the employee may take the following amounts of leave:
- For employees who normally work 40 hours or more per week: at least 80 hours
- For employees who normally work fewer than 40 hours in a week: at least the greater of either the amount of time the employee is scheduled to work in a 14-day period or the amount of time the employee actually works during an average 14-day period.
Other guidelines of this benefit include but are not limited to:
- An employer may count an employee’s unused PSST toward the PHEL. Employees are eligible for PHEL only once during the entirety of a public health emergency.
- An employee may use PHEL until four weeks after the official termination or suspension of the public health emergency.