Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act

The Emergency Paid Sick Leave is in addition to any existing sick leaves and benefits that the employees are already entitled to. This act applies to all employees irrespective of their duration of employment. However, employers may apply for exceptions for an employee who is a healthcare provider or an emergency first responder.

Under this act, a full-time employee may take up to 80 hours of Emergency Paid Sick Leave. A part-time employee may take up to the amount of hours they work in an average two-week period. Employee eligibility for this leave requires one of these conditions to be met:

• Employee needs to comply with a quarantine or an isolation order.

• Employee is advised by a healthcare provider to self-quarantine.

• Employee is experiencing symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis.

Note: The next three conditions pertain to an employee's family.

• The employee is caring for an individual under quarantine or medical self-quarantine.

• Employee is caring for a child whose school or place of care has been closed or is unavailable.

• Employee is experiencing any substantially similar condition to the above two conditions.

Employees taking leave under the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act for any of the first three circumstances listed above, must be paid at their regular rate of pay up to a maximum of $511 per day or an aggregate of $5,110. However, employees taking leave under the Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act for any of the last three circumstances listed above must be paid at two thirds their regular rate of pay up to a maximum of $200 per day or an aggregate of $2,000. The regular rate of pay is defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as the average pay over the last six months.

Note: Rates of pay may be subject to federal, state, or local minimum wage requirements. For the first three reasons, normal minimum wage rate may apply, if this is greater than the regular rate of pay. For the last three reasons, two-thirds the applicable minimum wage may apply, if this is greater than two-thirds the regular rate of pay.

The total sick leave taken under this act is limited to two weeks, for any combination of the six reasons stated above.

Emergency Paid Sick Leave expires on December 31, 2020, and the unused leaves in this category are not rolled over to the following year. You are not required to pay for unused leaves in the Emergency Paid Sick Leave category at the end of employment.

The pay for the leaves under this act are taxed as normal income, except that they are exempt from the employer portion of the Social Security tax. You may receive refundable tax credits to offset the cost of providing employees with Emergency Paid Sick Leave.